Cold comfort… Controlant’s CEO tells us how automation is revolutionising vaccine delivery

We speak with the CEO of Controlant, Gisli Herjolfsson, about the company and its cold chain solutions that are revolutionising delivery of vaccines to developing countries and more.

Q. Could you give us a brief overview of Controlant?

A. Controlant was founded in 2007 and grew out of a collaborative project by our founders aiming to develop wireless sensor technology that could feed into a centralised database while we were students at the University of Iceland. It was the arrival of H1N1 in 2009, better known as Swine Flu, however which concentrated our efforts. Iceland’s Directorate of Health acquired large quantities of the H1N1 vaccine as a proactive means to protect the country’s population but they were concerned that the storage coolers located throughout the country weren't reliable enough for the vaccine. A quick solution was needed.

We set out to develop our technology and services to protect the vaccines while en route to their intended destinations. Now the entire end-to-end pharma cold chain in Iceland has become monitored on a single platform reducing the total waste to below 0.3%. This inspired us to our current mission that is to reduce global waste due to temperature excursions in the pharmaceutical cold chains to 0.5%.

Our company has become a global leader in transforming and protecting cold-chains in the pharmaceutical, food and cold chain logistics sectors in more than 100 countries worldwide. Our subscription approach, cold-chain-as a-service (CHaaS), combines a web-enabled, cloud-based software platform with prescriptive analytics, powered by wireless, real-time IoT loggers with condition-monitoring, location aware sensors, and a powerful layer of automated logistics services.

Q. Why are cold chain solutions necessary?

A. First and foremost, it’s about patient safety. Each medicine and vaccine transported through the supply chain is ultimately used by a human being. Cold chain monitoring solutions are needed to ensure that medical products maintain their integrity from the time they leave a manufacturing facility until they’re delivered to a hospital, clinic, or pharmacy, which means that continuous temperature and condition monitoring is a necessary part of the process.

Generally, innovative cold chain monitoring solutions are needed to help reduce the staggering losses in global supply chains and to satisfy applicable regulations. Pharmaceutical losses add up to an estimated $5.4 billion globally and are expected to increase as patient demand continues to grow. Temperature variations in excursions are responsible for the degradation of up to 35% of the world’s vaccines.

The problem has been compounded by the nature of data collection for perishables: many siloed points along the supply chain lack network connectivity, and data collected by condition-monitoring devices — while current when it is collected — is not always immediately available for review and analysis to assess and ensure relative remaining shelf life, quality, or efficacy of products at the end of the supply chain.

Q. What challenges do companies face when trying to deliver vaccines/products to various countries?

A. The cold chain is constantly changing, which makes it difficult to anticipate and mitigate against all risks.

There are logistical issues involved with shipping products that travel for long distances or through multiple countries, each carrying its own unique set of challenges. For instance, there may be an inadequate number of designated truck stops along a shipment route in a particular country. Truck drivers may need to pull over into an unmonitored parking lot to rest, which places a shipment at risk of theft.

The regulatory landscape poses a different set of challenges. It may take less time to ship a product by air into a particular country, but due to its regulations and backlog, those products may sit in customs for weeks or months, placing temperature-sensitive products at risk, and therefore, it may be more efficient to send shipments via sea freight instead.

Supply chain complexity means that there are a number of stakeholders involved, including those from operations and quality, as well as logistics partners. They may all need shipment information, but historically, would only receive ad hoc data at the end of a shipment — which has limited stakeholders to documenting only what happened, and only after it happened.

Q. Are there specific issues surrounding developing countries and how does your solution help overcome these?

A. Many developing countries lack the infrastructure needed to efficiently and safely deliver vaccines — and yet, immunisation is one of the most important health interventions for children. There may be a lack of electricity to store supplies, and roads and other conditions make it difficult to reach certain areas, which means there is potentially a greater requirement for innovative products. Political conflict, migration and corruption are further barriers to vaccine access in these areas.

There are challenges to connecting stakeholders in developing areas together with shared access to the supply chain: government organisations and agencies, NGO’s and private groups may all be involved with vaccine delivery, but there has been a lack of visibility over product and supply data that could help with distribution and intervention efforts. Individuals may travel for days to reach a medical clinic, only to find that there isn’t any vaccine supply available. There is significant potential for new technology to help solve these challenges while having a significant impact.

Q. What differentiates your solution from other available options?

A. Customers only pay as they go for what they use, rather than purchase loggers up front; we call it cold chain as a service, or CHaaS: our trifecta of solutions — cloud software with prescriptive analytics, IoT loggers, and automated logistics services — are subscription-based, offering a cost-effective solution for businesses, which can scale up their operations as their needs evolve. With CHaaS, less upfront investment in human resources, processes and equipment is needed, while companies can gain access to the expertise needed that is directly relevant experience solving specific problems spanning across the supply chain.

Q. In your opinion, what advantages does an automated system offer clients and patients?

A. In our minds, automation and data aren’t the future — they’re table stakes. Data automation is necessary for businesses looking to streamline and effectively scale their logistics in a sustainable manner. Descriptive analytics enable stakeholders with the ability to control their cold chains and make better business decisions. Data automation provides additional opportunities to generate prescriptive analytics for informed forecasting — not only telling businesses what will be the likely outcome based on historical data, but also why.

For instance, with that data, we can trace shipments, routes and collect data along the way that places shipments at a higher risk given seasonality or weather patterns, and suggest the best routes to take, given those factors. This means that businesses can increase their operational efficiency, mitigate the risk of damage and waste, and increase their overall profitability.

Q. Will this solution enable users to remain fully compliant?

A. Our solutions are designed and manufactured with compliance as a key factor in mind. Good distribution practices (GDP), good manufacturing practices (GMP) and 21 CFR Part 11 compliance are primary concerns of our customers. Quality management and control are critical to our own business; we follow GDP and GMP, and are ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management system certified.

Q. Are there any limitations to the automated solution?

A. Adopting a cloud solution with real-time data requires stakeholder buy-in and internal processes to fully leverage the advantages that shipment and supply chain visibility offers. Our solutions are built for global shipments, via road, air and sea, for both primary and secondary distribution, so there may be many different stakeholders involved.

Our team operates as a virtual partner to our clients, facilitating the adoption and implementation of our solution, often providing services and expertise needed to supplement existing resources and constraints. Part of our work is in helping businesses to successfully navigate through their digital transformation, embrace change and build sustainable, cost-effective cold chains that will lead them into the future.

Q. Where do you see cold chain services in 10 years’ time?

A. In 10 years, we think we’ll see a shift to products being delivered directly to patients, which will mean that distributors and delivery service providers will need to ensure that temperature-sensitive assets maintain integrity through the last steps of their journey and remain safe for consumption.

We think that businesses of the future will adopt real-time visibility solutions and look to managed service providers in order to gain the cost structure, technology and collaboration opportunities with stakeholders across networks, to automate logistics, scale faster than their competition, better serve customers and partners and proactively protect their brand.