Securing the Medical Supply Chain: Addressing RSV Drug Shortages With IoT-Enabled Condition Monitoring in the Health Care Industry

SmartSense President Guy Yehiav discusses how supply chain shortages and conditioning monitoring impact antibody drug dosages for RSV. 

How are recent supply chain shortages impacting the health care industry, particularly in relation to antibody drug dosages for RSV, and what steps can health care organizations take to address these challenges?

Heightened demand for infant RSV immunization caused shortages that led to rationed doses of the antibody product, with prioritization over children with higher risk of illness. Faced with limited supplies of a crucial new treatment, health care organizations must employ IoT-enabled condition monitoring solutions to prevent potential excursions, which lead to high waste and further supply shortages or ineffective inoculation.

Regarding the CDC’s health alert on RSV vaccine shortages, how crucial is real-time temperature visibility for maintaining the efficacy of pharmaceutical products, and how do IoT solutions contribute to ensuring compliance with federal standards?

Real-time temperature and humidity monitoring combined with corrective action to save inventory help ensure medication efficacy through documented proof of product temperature and humidity levels. Whether assets are onsite or in-transit in the supply chain, remote temperature and compliance monitoring provide health care leaders with peace of mind in knowing whether product quality, safety, and compliance goals are being met.

Considering the rise in respiratory diseases, including RSV, and the ongoing cold and flu season, how do you anticipate immunization shortages impacting the US medical supply chain, and what strategies, particularly involving automated IoT solutions, can be implemented to overcome these challenges?

Immunization shortages tighten the critical medical supply chain and put increased pressure on operators to keep the available supply in optimal conditions for timely vaccine distribution. Organizations today enhance supply chain visibility by integrating IoT devices throughout the entire distribution network. This includes tracking the movement of vaccines from manufacturers to distribution centers and finally to health care providers and pharmacy retailers. Improved visibility of location, quantity, and condition, helps identify bottlenecks and optimize the overall supply chain.

How do IoT-enabled condition monitoring solutions in the pharmaceutical supply chain prevent excursions and disruptions, contributing to avoiding supply shortages or ineffective inoculations?

Calibrated sensors and data loggers are added to critical assets and environments to record condition data like humidity, temperature, gas, and pressure measurements. This data combined with simulators, is used to trigger alarms and specific workflows, when there is an anticipated problem and provide insight into equipment performance. In the wake of a facility power outage or accidental refrigerator opening, pharmacy managers will be alerted in real-time to quickly address the problem, maintain compliance standards, and keep the inventory and therefore the patients safe.

In addressing the need for more than real-time monitoring, how can health care organizations implement effective excursion notifications with prescriptive actions to swiftly tackle issues in the medical supply chain, given the critical nature of vaccine storage?

Organizations should choose advanced enterprise scale monitoring systems that provide continuous monitoring and generate alerts when temperatures or conditions deviate from the norm. Additionally, they should consider systems that offer historical data and analytics to identify trends and potential issues before they become critical. Ensuring that staff members are executing prescriptive action and standard operations processes will also determine the effectiveness of their response process.

In your insights, you stress the importance of automating the complete condition monitoring and response process. What challenges may health care organizations encounter in implementing such automation, and how can IoT technologies proactively monitor storage settings and ensure the safe distribution of vaccines?

Health care systems often involve a multitude of devices and technologies from different vendors. Guiding seamless communication and interoperability among these diverse systems is a significant challenge, but there are solutions on the market that have accomplished seamless interoperability with third-party sensing devices and enterprise management systems. This helps enterprises manage their IoT backbone with one vendor, using multiple types of sensors across departments.

IoT solutions offer valuable insights and automated, prescriptive workflows that empower employees to protect supply chain assets in real time. From the warehouse to trucks to pharmacy refrigeration systems, IoT condition monitoring can protect pharmaceutical operations so that doctors and pharmacists can focus on saving lives.