The accreditors and manufacturers of the pharmaceutical drugs are anticipated to examine the cold-chain packaging and processes even more closely in the COVID-19 and post-COVID eras. This has been reported according to Jon Pritchett, PharmD, the pharmacy program director at the Accreditation Commission for Health Care (ACHC), in Cary, N.C. The advancement of medicine has led them driving towards fundamentally complex biotechnology drugs like the biologics and biosimilar drugs. And hence, their APIs (active pharmaceutical ingredients) tend to have more stringent temperature requirements and shorter shelf lives; many of the best-selling pharmaceutical products are now biotechnology-derived, and require handling and storing at 2–8°C.
This changing dimension of the pharmaceutical products has probably become the need of the hour, when the demand for medicines has advanced even more than the edibles. Most notably, insulin remains the globally largest cold-chain biopharmaceutical product, and its demand remains high. Some manufacturers already go so far as to show specialty pharmacies the precise package materials and packout configurations they have validated to optimize temperature integrity of high-value medications and ensure patient safety, Dr. Pritchett added. “They even state the size of cooling packs and how to layer them in the box to maintain temperature for specific medications for set time periods,” he told Pharmacy Practice News.
COVID-19 has added further pressure to pack out and ship or courier properly because insurers now approve 90-day prescriptions for patients sheltering at home. The 90-day extension is being applied to refrigerated non-specialty items such as insulin, and patients want their medications dropped off at their doorstep while carriers struggle to meet delivery demand for all kinds of merchandise.
At the same time, such medications that are developed via modifying the body’s own substances- blood and cells, for an instance, have also seen an upsurge in their demand (requiring body temperatures during transit themselves). Thus, given that many modern pharmaceuticals now come with stating various temperature requirements, the very term “cold chain” may seem less encompassing than the newer term “temperature control”. Yet, practically, cold chain solutions remain vital, regardless of the naming conventions.
