Clinical supply & logistics Clinical supply & logistics
Go to waste The supply slowdowns caused by the pandemic highlighted the importance of building
redundancy and fl exibility into the supply chain. A Herculean effort to keep clinical trials going focused the industry on cost-effi ciency and the risk of waste, while in the background long-term issues such as climate change accentuated the same issues. Jim Banks speaks to Steven Jacobs, chairman of the board at Global BioPharm Solutions and a board member of the Global Clinical Supplies Group (GCSG), and Aaron Steinbrecher, clinical supply project manager at AbbVie, to examine how sponsors overcame the challenges presented by the pandemic, and how this will shape a more sustainable and effi cient approach in the future.
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o one seeks out inefficiency, but it often creeps in unnoticed when eyes are focused on more immediate concerns. Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, however, the disruption to supply chains – and the consequent risk of trials failing – put waste and cost firmly at the top of the agenda. On the one hand, a drop in demand caused by the suspension of some trials – and partly caused by the hospitals and clinical sites being redeployed to handle the pandemic – meant that even the best-prepared sponsors risked seeing piles of investigational medicinal products (IMPs) go to waste. On the other hand, a desire to push forward with trials in unprecedented circumstances forced many to adopt a more agile approach to the delivery of IMPs. Either way, cost, risk and waste became key concerns.
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“Some sites closed completely, others partially and many patients were afraid to go to hospital to get treated,” says Steven Jacobs, chairman of the board at Global BioPharm Solutions and a board member of the Global Clinical Supplies Group (GCSG). “With air travel shut down, getting supplies to sites, which is usually very easy, became very hard. The cargo holds of commercial flights were jam-packed with clinical supplies.” Usually, around 70% of clinical supplies are flown on commercial airlines rather than being transported by logistics companies. With flights reduced to – at most – 25% of normal schedules, the clinical trials supply chain was, in the early days of the pandemic, brought to a virtual standstill. Some sponsors chartered aircraft at 50 or 100 times the cost of a standard, temperature-
Clinical Trials Insight /
www.worldpharmaceuticals.net
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