Where the Last Mile Breaks Down

The rise in cargo theft and fraud is becoming an increasingly significant concern for healthcare shipments, according to Arthur Axelrad, co-founder and CEO of Dispatch Science, who notes that these challenges are being raised directly by customers across the supply chain. Healthcare products—often high-value, temperature-sensitive, and tightly regulated—present an attractive target for theft, making security a top priority not only from a financial standpoint, but also from a patient safety and regulatory compliance perspective.

Axelrad explains that customers are encountering issues on multiple fronts. Beyond the straightforward risk of theft, there are broader concerns related to maintaining chain of custody, ensuring product integrity, and meeting stringent compliance requirements. Any disruption along the supply chain—whether through theft, diversion, or fraud—can compromise patient trust, delay care, and expose manufacturers and logistics providers to regulatory and reputational risk.

In response, Axelrad notes that his organization has been actively collaborating with both clients and internal development teams to address these vulnerabilities. By listening closely to customer feedback, they are enhancing their platform with additional security-focused capabilities designed to mitigate risk across the shipment lifecycle. These improvements aim to provide greater visibility, control, and accountability, helping stakeholders better safeguard healthcare products as they move through complex global networks.

The approach underscores a broader industry shift toward proactive risk management. Rather than reacting to incidents after they occur, logistics providers are investing in technology and platform enhancements that strengthen security from the outset. Axelrad emphasizes that this collaborative, solutions-driven strategy is essential as cargo theft continues to evolve in scale and sophistication.

Ultimately, the message is clear: as theft and fraud risks rise, healthcare logistics providers must pair strong partnerships with smarter tools to protect shipments, preserve compliance, and ensure that critical therapies reach patients safely and reliably.

He also describes the most common breakdowns in visibility or accountability during the last mile for temperature-sensitive or high-value medical products; the steps healthcare and pharmaceutical organizations should prioritize in order to build a more resilient, transparent, and patient-safe last-mile delivery ecosystem; and much more.

A transcript of his conversation with PC can be found below.

PC: From a logistics standpoint, what are the most common breakdowns in visibility or accountability during the last mile for temperature-sensitive or high-value medical products?

Axelrad: We're often presented with challenges where customers would, well, I would say companies come to us before their customers with challenges in maintaining security and compliance. And those challenges are typically things like the fact that they can't easily track a driver. It’s a wide spectrum of technology or lack of technology that leads to these problems.

Is there adequate reporting and transparency at the point of pickup? When a driver arrives at a point of pickup to pick up a narcotic or pick up radiopharmaceuticals—something that's sensitive, temperature-controlled—do they have the adequate digital verifications to make sure that the right person picked up the right thing at the right place, at the right time? It starts there, and then there's often a need to have a little bit of logging to say, let's confirm, what did I pick up, and maybe what's the temperature, other characteristics.

The first piece of that chain is at the point of capture. Is of that captured electronically and adequately? It depends on the processes and it depends on the tools that are available on both the shipper side and on the carrier side. Next step. The carrier now—let's assume that they they've successfully dotted the I's, crossed the T's. Now they leave. What kind of visibility and tracking do we have on that vehicle? Do we know that the vehicle is going to and the driver is going to proceed on the expected route? Are they stopping somewhere where they shouldn't? Are they going off course?

The next challenge is making sure that the companies have adequate tracking that allows them to see and measure this. Are there alerts in place if something is taking too long? Maybe there's a risk now that something is going to be in transit or for too long, and the temperature will fluctuate, will drop. I guess that would be some of the in-transit risks, and then the next piece is also at the point of delivery.

It's kind of the reverse now of the pickup—there's still a need to have adequate reporting and digital verifications. Is there a photo that's being taken? Is a photo adequately geotagged with the time, place, and coordinates of when and where that photo was taken? These are all different, sort of examples. We could dive in more if that's something you want to get into. At a high level, like those are key pieces from a chain of custody perspective and a tracking perspective that carriers are looking for in order to be compliant and safe.