Nicholas Saraceno

Day three of LogiPharma Europe kicked off with a panel discussion, “Embracing the Sea Freight Opportunity: How Can You Overcome Recent Disruption Challenges to Drive Cost-Reduction, Reliability and Sustainability?” It featured Claus Aagaard,VP, head of global reefer management with DB Schenker, as moderator; Richard Farquharson, VP, global logistics, AstraZeneca; Matthew Roberts, VP, global head, supply chain logistics and distribution, GE Healthcare; and Stephen Mitchell, quality and compliance manager, GSK. The discussion spanned multiple focus points.

In starting the session, participating companies shared their goals for sustainability. They were all in agreement in terms of interest in wanting to commit to the cause, a similar sentiment that other pharma businesses expressed in a 

. With the healthcare sector being responsible for over 4% of 

, Farquharson expressed that the industry needs to take a bold approach in further considering sea freight. By 2030, AstraZeneca aims to become carbon negative for all residual emissions, while also cutting its entire value chain footprint in half. GSK is beginning to shift more of its volume to sea, especially amid the combination of wanting to support patients and meet certain stakeholder expectations.

In Mitchell’s opinion, sea transport is of great benefit to the pharma industry, because temperature regulation is not as much of an issue; containers remain closed while traveling through inspection, however, companies run the risk of these being held up in ports due to global disruptions, such as what occurred in the Suez Canal. At the same time, he acknowledged that sea freight may carry a high volume of product, but not necessarily product that is “high value,” so to speak.

For efficiency purposes, the concept of co-loading pallets is promising, but would require partnership arrangements. Farquharson recommended limiting these agreements to a few trusted relationships. The question that may rise, added Mitchell is, who will be willing to collaborate? Doing so requires effort and risk-sharing.

Of course, with opportunity comes risk, but Roberts suggested that individual parties “challenge the norms” by having a balanced scorecard that features service, quality, and cost measures. Farquharson—who commented that AstraZeneca is looking to potentially ship biologics by sea at some point—also noted that the financial risk in using containers for these purposes should be further explored by qualifying and validating sea containers, specifically, for safety.

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From logistics lessons learned, how pharma can navigate new opportunities surfacing in ocean shipping.  

LogiPharma Europe 2023: The Advantages of Sea Freight

Moderator Kelsey Carvell, partner at Deloitte; Didier Jourdan, associate VP, global supply chain, Sanofi; Javier Martin, SVP, global strategy and development operations, Grünenthal; and Jens Schader, CVP, global supply chain management, Boehringer Ingelheim, partook in LogiPharma Europe’s keynote panel this morning in Lyon, France, titled “Digitalizing Patient Centricity: How Can You Leverage Innovative Tech to Ensure High Service Levels in the Face of Increasingly Complex Supply Chains?”

Carvell initiated the discussion by sharing with attendees a question that patient centricity should answer: How do we achieve optimal outcomes for the most patients, with the lowest environmental impact? In other words, it should address:

The panel then began to address various questions, including:

. Where would you place your company on the spectrum of involvement with personalized medicine, and what are the factors your company is evaluating as it develops a patient-centric strategy around these products?

. How are you managing to drive access and patient-centric operations in lower-volume and/or harder-to-reach regions?

. How is the next generation of customized medicines—such as cell and gene therapy (CGT)—driving patient-centric operations across the industry?

. How are you building resilience across your supply chain and contract manufacturing organizations (CMOs) to guarantee availability of medicines, given demand fluctuations in key markets?

. Can you provide an example of how your company is aligning patient-centric strategy with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals?

Below are highlights from a selection of the aforementioned questions:

Jourdan noted that Sanofi has a long heritage and the company’s focus and activities in the personalized medicine field are accelerating. Boehringer Ingelheim, said Schader, is more primary care-focused, but wants to explore personalized medicine as part of its pipeline.

He noted that it’s important to remember that one size does not fit all when it comes approaches in personalized medicine. For patient-centric models to be effective, Schader added, they should

be powered by collaboration with patients and other stakeholders. Essentially, centralized planning and seeing the process through (end-to-end) is a must. For Grünenthal, a German-based pharma specialized in pain management, Martin said it strives to ensure that the key factors impacting patient centricity are decided early on in the clinical development process.

To Martin, supply chain analysis is critical—companies should set out to determine their weakest element and address it head-on. For instance, in Grünenthal’s case, it is currently certifying its LATAM facilities to also supply to Europe. These are the two main regions that the company supplies to.

In efforts to protect the environment, Sanofi’s global health unit aims to improve access to care in 40 of the lowest-income nations via healthcare access models that provide sustainable impact, Jourdan mentioned. In fact, upon further research, the company supports ministries of health and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in their transition to universal health coverage. Further, the business has launched various sustainability goals, including eco-packaging for 100% of new products by 2025, and by 2027, vaccines that are blister free.

Boehringer Ingelheim has pledged to becoming carbon neutral in company operations by 2030—Schader also alluded to the importance of shifting to smaller and reusable devices for patient-centricity purposes.

Expert panel identifies five key areas where patient-centric strategies can benefit supply chains the most—and lead to better patient outcomes.

LogiPharma Europe 2023: Digitalizing Patient Centricity

An interesting concept is the idea of a “drill-down” roundtable, where several topics are presented with respective table numbers, where attendees can choose which subject matter they would like to discuss.

In one such event today at LogiPharma Europe, there were five tables set up with the following categories:

1. How can freight and pharma collectively collaborate to reduce carbon emissions

2. Import and late-stage packaging personalization

3. Delivering digitalization in air freight

4. Reducing logistics costs while driving sustainability innovation

5. Implementation of sustainable passive shipping solutions and reverse logistics processes

Being that all of these topics were of particular interest, I decided to sit in on table No. 1 (at random), which was led by Julian Sutch, global head of pharma for Emirates. Here, there was quite a bit of healthy conversation exchanged, including the idea of Scope 3 emissions—the activities from assets that are not owned or controlled directly by an organization, but rather ones that indirectly affect the company’s value chain, and that may be difficult to measure.

A major focal point was the idea that air freight and pharma can collaborate, but as noted by a table member, Julian Wann, AstraZeneca’s global category leader of freight and logistics, consumer demand dictates decisions. He said the “Amazon effect,” in which consumers seek products essentially instantaneously, is arguably putting drug manufacturers in a conundrum: speed or efficiency in terms of shipping products with emptier pallets, or waiting several days longer for those pallets to be filled. The solution, Wann offers, is that these consumer expectations ought to change.

Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), which the International Civil Aviation Organization defines as “renewable or waste-derived aviation fuels that meets sustainability criteria,” is a start, experts said, but it could take several years to feel its impact. Self-driving electric trucks was another innovation cited as potentially boosting sustainability efforts as well.

Roundtable drills down on ways the two sectors can come together to reduce carbon emissions.

LogiPharma Europe 2023: Air Freight and Pharma as Key Sustainability Partners

Moderator Thorsten Roggenbuck, DHL’s Global LLP product lead; Eme Luth, Gilead’s executive director and global head of ERP and corporate functions, IT; Frédéric Zwahlen, SVP, technical operations and supply chain, Vifor Pharma; Eric Thomas, VP global supply chain, BioMérieux; and Steen Mørch, VP, supply chain and manufacturing, Novo Nordisk, participated in this morning’s keynote panel discussion in Lyon, France, titled “Driving Agility and Resilience: How Can You Derive Actionable Insights from Your End-To-End Suppliers to Maximize Adaptability and Secure Your Global Supply Chain Networks?”

Roggenbuck kicked off the chat by providing the audience with a breakdown of agile resilience countermeasures, including:

Luth remarked that the pharma industry, in her opinion, provides “the most dynamic place from a tech perspective,” and that Gilead—which relies on partnerships with contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMOs), since it only manufacturers 30% of its products—is focusing on speed with quality.

Forming partnerships as it pertains to establishing supply chain resilience was a theme that rose to the top during this presentation. Thomas commented that trust at a personal level is important to have in these relationships, especially when it comes to building technology (the predictive end-to-end and agility elements in particular) and connections.

When the question of what makes a good partnership was raised, Mørch, who predicted there will most likely be fewer of them in the future, noted that they should meet the following criteria:

· A catalogue of services for parties to further develop

He also acknowledged the need for a change in mindset: we tend to believe that data is just available, but rather it should be treated as an asset, one that clients may need to be willing to pay for.

Another way to increase agility is the shift from a global supply chain setup to a more regionalized approach. Thomas noted that this has become quite useful in helping navigate around potential trade barriers, such as those in China, for example.

Naturally, Mørch pointed out, regionalization results in offering sustainable efforts, where planes can limit emissions when it comes to delivery of products and is in Thomas’ eyes, synergistic, as after all, “we’re helping the world become a healthier place.”

Panel discusses the importance of developing strong relationships in order to maximize partner and supplier visibility.

LogiPharma Europe 2023: Ensuring Agility and Resilience

Tom Cotter, executive director of Healthcare Ready, a non-profit organization,dives into ways to facilitate solutions in the face of a disaster, including how to protect patient access to medication during these times of crisis.

Podcast is available directly on SoundCloud.

Podcasts

Non-profit executive details ways to ensure supply chain resilience during emergencies. 

Protecting Patient Access to Medication in the Midst of Crisis

As our publisher Mike Hennessy Jr. discusses in his "Publisher's Note," I have noticed along my travels that efforts to comply with the 2013 Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) has been a top priority among the links that make up the aforementioned supply chain. Perhaps it was great timing that I had the opportunity to attend the Healthcare Distribution Alliance (HDA)’s annual Distribution Management Conference, which was held in Indianapolis in March. This event was special to me, given that it was the first time I’ve covered one of the association’s conferences in person, as opposed to virtually. HDA also considers this one to be its largest supply chain education event.

Although I began to reference this in my show coverage last month, I think it’s worth reminding folks that there were a wide range of topics presented at the conference for attendees to take advantage of—ranging from DSCSA coverage; traceability and serialization standards; environmental, social, and governance (ESG); and a 340B update. The topic of 340B—which was last in my list for no specific reason—featured a session held by Andrew L. Wilson, PharmD, FASHP, McKesson’s VP of 340B solutions. Wilson described how the program’s inception dates back to the early 1990s, when the Veterans Health Care Act of 1992 (VHCA) enacted Section 340B of the Public Health Services Act. In a nutshell, it allows “covered entities” to purchase “covered outpatient drugs” at reduced pricing for dispensing to “eligible patients.”

So what makes a place of business a “covered entity?” One must apply for participation, while also meeting entity-specific requirements that are set out in the statute and interpretive regulations, some of which include, but are not limited to:

Being a government-owned or controlled hospital.

If non-government, a non-profit that has an agreement with a government entity.

Must be listed on the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) 

Covered entities must also determine whether they will be using 340B drugs for their Medicaid patients (known as “carve-in”), or if they will be purchasing drugs for their Medicaid patients via other mechanisms (known as a “carve-out”). This is to avoid what Wilson calls a “double-dip,” formally known by HRSA as duplicate discount prohibition.

I would be remiss not to mention that the 

 team also attended Informa’s Patient Assistance & Access Programs (PAP) show last month in Philadelphia. We took advantage of the opportunity to attend a plethora of educational seminars at our disposal—with topics ranging from “improving the patient/HCP experience while reducing overall operating costs,” to “taking a digital approach to solving the fragmented support service experience."

 with SMEs in the space. We look forward to sharing this content with you all very soon.

Nicholas Saraceno is Pharmaceutical Commerce's Editor. He can be reached at

DSCSA, 340B among the headliners at the Healthcare Distribution Alliance's Distribution Management Conference.