Three Themes Powering LogiPharma USA

1. End-to-end supply chain visibility/transparency

In a session surrounding “From Clinical to Commercial: Improving Cold Chain Insights Across the Value Chain,” Jeff Lander, director of global logistics engineering at Moderna, shared that the company has been making an augmented customer experience its ultimate priority, with the help of direct-to-pharmacy or direct to patient care-type efforts.

That concept has been amplified with the help of visibility-tracking tech.

“This year, we put a focus on an enhanced customer experience, to be able to not have something show up that needed to be intercepted, that wasn't in temperature range,” he said. “We were really striving for, call it for lack of better words, an Amazon Prime experience for our end user base,” Lander explained. “So that was real-time tracking visibility, and also the ability to intercept the shipment. It also included if we saw our temperature trending in the wrong direction, if we saw some sort of interruption in the network via UPS or FedEx in terms of a missed flight, to be able to provide the visibility, while also having accurate information in terms of temperature, letting it arrive a day or two longer, and knowing confidently that the product is still viable.”

2. Sustainable efforts

One topic of major focus at this year’s LogiPharma USA is sustainability. Of course, some could make the argument that it has been a buzzword for quite some time now, as noted by various stakeholders’ pledges to achieve net zero emissions over the next couple of decades. However, what is just as important as one stating his or her intent to solve a problem is one’s effort in determining how to solve it.

A panel discussion regarding "How Pharma Can Better Understand Its Carbon Footprint and Reach Sustainability Goals" was powered by multiple objectives, including: becoming aware of various the types of data and data sharing that is happening across the ecosystem; defining carbon offsetting and how it can be of value to reach sustainability goals; demonstrating the results and benefits of sustainability efforts.

“From my seat and who I work with, there are companies who want this environmental data, whether it be emissions, energy use, or water and commodity tracking from their suppliers. They're trying to understand what their supply chain is doing,” explained Alaina Passavant, account manager, CDP Supply Chain. “ … They're finding that the most basic thing is that they don't know who to contact at their suppliers. They don't know who's responsible. They don't know if their supplier has a sustainability team or is aware of what even emissions are.

“ … I think one of the big opportunities that we're having, though, is that there is a significant growth in expectations of improving on all topics, whether that be sustainability for planet or sustainability for cost reductions, profit margins, etc., but just having that growth and the opportunity to come together as customers in a similar level of your supply chain to then ask your suppliers to do XYZ or to report on things [is valuable].”

3. Supply chain security and safety

In order to accomplish the industry’s ultimate priority—safety among the supply and its patients—a certain level of collaboration and communication is required among partners and stakeholders.

To further illustrate this concept, a panel on “The Evolving Threat Landscape—The US Government’s Lessons Learned for Mitigating Risk Across the Pharma Supply Chain” sought to cover various subject matters including the physical threats affecting supply chain operations both inside the United States and across global transit routes; how to protect digital assets across the value chain; and lessons learned from Operation Warp Speed.

For one, when it comes to protecting the pharma supply chain, Jeanette McMillian, assistant director, National Counterintelligence and Security Center’s SCD, ODNI, noted that it starts with the CIA, just not the one that you might think.

“We certainly look at this as the CIA. Not the CIA and Langley, but CIA when it comes to confidentiality, integrity and availability,” she explained. As we've all suffered through the pandemic, we know that last piece, that availability piece, has become first and paramount to all of our supply chains as we try to manage those risks. We saw that during the pandemic, several nation state actors, are targeting organizations. They were targeting organizations across the board, especially when it came to the COVID-19, development of the vaccine, and then also the distribution chains. So those organizations that they were targeting included everything from healthcare bodies, pharmaceutical companies, academia, medical research organizations, and of course, state and local governments. At that time, the intellectual property surrounding the vaccine was absolutely critical to protect, as we all knew, and then doing so was in need to protect both the confidence of the vaccine and the integrity and the ingredients that went into it.”