White Paper Intercommunication | Berlinger USA

In the commercial pharma industry, most shipments consist of multiple pallets or packages to carry the pharmaceutical products to their destination. The monitoring of temperature-sensitive product shipments has been implemented by using a remote real-time monitoring device to track the shipment and multiple temperature data loggers to ensure product quality.

With traditional monitoring, data loggers had to be read out manually at the shipment’s destination and did not provide any on-time information on the condition of the pallet or package before arrival. If a temperature excursion occurred during transport, this would be detected not before the arrival, and only then could the consequences of the excursion be mitigated, for instance by dispatching a replacement shipment.

So far, the investment in monitoring provides only insights into the temperature, without any supply chain visibility and decisions have been taken at the arrival of the pharmaceuticals, rather than instantaneously when critical events occur.

To close this visibility gap, the industry has been equipping each pallet or package with real-time monitoring devices, resulting in instantaneous visibility but also incurring significant costs for condition monitoring.

“The pharmaceutical industry is undergoing a technological evolution,” 
Lodewijk van Hoesel, Senior System Architect, Berlinger & Co. AG

With SmartSystem, Berlinger introduces Modular Real-Time^TM. A technology that heralds a new era for cold chain monitoring of pharmaceutical goods by overcoming the challenges of temperature monitoring and revolutionizing the way pharmaceutical goods are monitored. This technology enables to:

- Eliminate separate solutions, one solution for real-time tracking to gain insight into the product’s operational handling and location, and another solution for product temperature monitoring for quality assurance.

- Exploit the benefits of real-time condition monitoring of pharmaceutical products, without increasing the cost of monitoring due to having to equip each pallet or package with multiple real-time monitoring devices.

The Modular Real-Time^TM technology provides visibility in pharmaceutical supply chains and allows instant decisionmaking to proactively intervene and safeguard products when critical events such as temperature excursions occur. This technical evolution reduces monitoring costs and carbon emissions in the long term, and increases the resilience to unforeseen and disruptive supply chain events for the pharmaceutical industry. 

Since products become more complex and patient-centric there is a need for more centralized visibility in the monitoring of pharmaceutical products. New types of products such as biologics and cell and gene therapies are even more sensitive to time and temperature, thus requiring more stringent monitoring and ‘on-time’ action to safeguard the product.

Explore the details of this groundbreaking technology in the white paper and how this innovation is reshaping the pharmaceutical cold chain. Learn how Berlinger is dedicated to shaping the future of the pharmaceutical supply chain.