Roambee’s technology solution for real-time logistics visibility has been proven to overcome many of the challenges of global COVID-19 vaccine distribution. Following extensive monitoring of clinical trial shipments of its COVID-19 vaccine by a leading global pharmaceutical company, Roambee’s technology has demonstrated that it can play a key role in providing safe, rapid, global access to vaccines.
New distribution channels will be needed to rapidly supply vaccines worldwide and these must be closely monitored to assess reliability and efficiency. The Head of Digital Supply Chain Strategy at the leading global pharma company, commented, “The Roambee monitoring solution allows real-time assessment, using cloud-analytics and machine learning to recognize bottlenecks and make recommendations to optimize the process, especially when there is limited time to plan logistics and distribution from door to door.” Roambee is compliant with the US FDA’s 21 CFR Part 11 and uses NIST-certified sensor technology to provide live location mapping of every batch. This gives warehouses up-to-date arrival times to allow for storage optimization.
Vaccine distribution requires strict temperature control to prevent degradation of active ingredients which directly impacts the shelf life of the vaccine. Current monitoring systems use passive data loggers to measure temperature during transportation, providing a report per-batch on arrival of the vaccine. Whilst this satisfies regulatory requirements, it doesn’t allow for proactive responses to be made during the journey to prevent damaged batches or security risks that can result in significant additional costs and time delays downstream. This is especially important when global demand is so high.
Roambee uses a combination of active sensors with its multi-modal visibility platform and control tower to monitor and respond to temperature, location, and condition excursions at individual box-level, in real time. Unlike passive sensors, users can define and automate what to do and who will do it by setting up workflows to handle temperature excursions when they occur. Roambee also helps to predict the next condition that the product will be exposed to and, with such information at their fingertips, vaccine distributors can rescue a shipment that is deviating from pre-set conditions and ensure delivery of a quality product. Roambee is a completely self-contained system and doesn’t rely on any external parties along the chain of custody for check-ins, Electronic Data Interchanges, GPS data, or temperature data uploads. Roambee offers full traceability and transparency by delivering a complete chain of custody, chain of condition and chain of shipment integrity report with every shipment.
Scott Hurley, Vice President of Product Marketing at Roambee, commented, “We’re proud to be able to combine our extensive experience in technology and logistics to address the challenges of vaccine distribution. Roambee provides trust in the entire chain of custody, while also optimizing the supply chain to deliver COVID-19 vaccines as efficiently as possible. We are already in discussions with many pharmaceutical companies to provide this much-needed solution and help to bring an end to this devastating global pandemic.”
Roambee is available on demand to pharmaceutical organizations working to rapidly deliver a vaccine on an unprecedented global scale. The Company’s managed solution has been extensively validated by one of the world’s top pharmaceutical companies to provide confidence in its effectiveness and advantages over existing passive and active tracking devices. This removes the need for each pharmaceutical organization to conduct its own due diligence, significantly reducing the logistical hurdles and time required for implementation.