Blockchain technology has the potential to improve cost efficiency within the supply chain for pharmaceutical manufacturers, according to a new report by Pharma Logistics IQ. The report highlights that 50% of pharma businesses are spending too much money on temperature-controlled logistics and that blockchain technology has the potential to reduce supply chain costs while also improving data capture and traceability tools. Respondents stated that they think personalised medicines will have a significant effect on the supply chain over the next decade, making shipment consolidation and outsourcing more challenging. More so, respondents said that modern supply chain planning must take into consideration things like third-party logistics, data loggers and a variety of passive and active containers. Over a third of respondents said that their biggest ‘pain point’ over the next year was reducing supply chain costs, and almost half blamed this on complex business operations.

The topic of supply chains was recently discussed at the Temperature Control and Logistics (TCL) event. Katherine Gordon, programme director for TCL 2019, said: “These results suggest that there is not a single area of the supply chain which is particularly cost inefficient, and the challenges of maintaining cost efficiency can vary between organisations, making the problem personalised and therefore harder to combat for the market as a whole.”

Find out more about how Blockchain, Pharma 4.0 and IoT is impacting the pharmaceutical temperature controlled supply chain by downloading the Expert insight into supply chain efficiency and technology report. Download it here.