On Monday, privately held temperature logistics startup Ember Technologies (whose temp-controlled smart beverage mug you might recall from the holiday shopping season) announced a partnership with listed drug distributor Cardinal Health on a breakthrough technology for the secure shipment of temperature-sensitive medicines in the global pharmaceutical supply chain.
The jointly developed product, called Ember Cube, is a digital shipping box equipped with cloud-based temperature reporting, GPS location tracking, and return-to-sender technology, distinguished from the current industry standard for transporting temperature-sensitive medicine which includes single-use ice packs, Styrofoam, and cardboard.
The Ember Cube uses an onboard cellular radio to report real-time temperature and humidity tracking and GPS location information that can be viewed via Ember’s cloud-based dashboard. This patented technology allows for precision control, so that medicines and vaccines arrive at the required temperature range, ready for use.
The cube’s return-to-sender technology allows each Ember Cube to be reused hundreds of times, reducing waste, and eliminating single-use packaging. Once a healthcare provider has received its drug shipment, the Ember Cube’s built-in cellular radio communicates with the shipping service to schedule a pick-up, automatically providing its current GPS location, and generating a new shipping label so can it be efficiently returned to Cardinal Health’s distribution center.
“Since Ember’s inception, it has been our goal to leverage our temperature control technology to serve the healthcare industry, with the ultimate mission of helping to improve and save lives,” Ember Founder and CEO Clay Alexander said. “We have formed a powerful new partnership with Cardinal Health to codevelop and commercialize many of our patented healthcare industry inventions to bring this vision to life.”
Cardinal Health is a key player in the delivery of logistics solutions for specialty pharmaceutical products, which often have unique temperature requirements. According to 2020 figures from the Biopharma Cold Chain Sourcebook, provided by Ember, global spending on cold-chain pharmaceutical products is expected to reach more than $21 billion by 2024, with storage solution development struggling to keep pace with demand. Through its partnership with Ember, Cardinal Health says it will leverage its technology infrastructure and national presence as a leading distributor of pharmaceutical and medical products to hospitals, pharmacies, and physician clinics to deploy Ember’s cold chain technology.
“Cardinal Health is investing in digital solutions and technology to help our healthcare customers solve problems in innovative ways,” said Heidi Hunter, President of Cardinal Health Specialty Solutions. “Our partnership with Ember utilizes technology solutions to set a new industry standard for real-time visibility and product integrity, while also providing transformative waste reduction.”
“The Ember Cube will be a particularly relevant solution for the many cell and gene therapies that are in the drug development pipeline, due to their temperature sensitivity, high value and need for real-time integrated tracking,” Hunter added.
Cardinal Health plans to launch a customer pilot for the Ember Cube in 2022.
