UPS to Use Sensors That Can Track Medical Packages at All Times
November 20 2019 - 6:19PM
Dow Jones News
By Sara Castellanos
United Parcel Service Inc. early next year plans to launch a
service for health-care customers that uses sensors and data
analytics to track medical packages' exact location in near-real
time.
The service, UPS Premier, will prioritize the handling of
shipments such as personalized medicines, DNA and gene therapies,
investigative drugs, laboratory specimens and implantable medical
devices. The goal is to ensure that packages arrive at exactly the
right time and place, despite factors such as bad weather.
"Having better visibility about where shipments are [means] when
unexpected things happen, we'll be in a better position to react,"
said Juan Perez, the company's chief information and engineering
officer.
UPS sees opportunity for growth in the area of so-called
precision logistics, or the act of getting critical drugs and
health-care devices to their destinations at the right time with a
high level of consistency, Mr. Perez said.
Sensors on the packages will let UPS staff know where they are
at any given time. Currently, UPS employees know where a
high-priority package is at a few points throughout the delivery
cycle based on visual cues that are placed on packages.
The new sensors interact with electronic readers in sorting and
distribution operations, using technologies including Bluetooth,
cellular and Wi-Fi. UPS employees can use that information to
prioritize deliveries and change them as necessary, Mr. Perez said.
For example, if there is a risk of a weather-related delay, the
package can be quickly identified and rerouted to make sure it
still gets to patients on time, he said.
The new service is the latest example of how technology is being
used to improve the complex health-care supply chain, which often
involves packages that are temperature-sensitive and can expire
quickly. As many as 10 entities handle a drug before it gets to a
patient, including manufacturers, pharmacies and wholesale
distributors, experts say.
FedEx Corp. has a health-care focused logistics service called
SenseAware that customers can use to monitor location of shipments,
as well as precise temperature, light exposure and barometric
pressure. The system gives customers updates in near-real-time.
Merck KGaA said last month that it plans to start testing a
cloud-based software platform that can analyze in real time data
points from various organizations within the drugmaker's supply
chain. The goal is to use analytics and machine learning to predict
and prevent drug shortages.
UPS's new service will depend in part on a tool that uses
analytics and machine learning to gather and consolidate data from
various applications within the company's logistics network to
better predict package flow, volume and delivery status.
The need for precision logistics has increased because of a
growing elderly population and trends toward personalized health,
which focuses on predicting and preventing diseases.
UPS could eventually expand the more advanced level of package
tracking beyond the health-care industry, Mr. Perez said.
Eventually, customers might be able to reroute packages at any
point during the delivery process if they decide they don't want a
product or they want it delivered to another destination. "Supply
chains of the future will require that level of flexibility," Mr.
Perez said.
Write to Sara Castellanos at sara.castellanos@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 20, 2019 18:04 ET (23:04 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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