Supply Chain
Technology Podcast

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

DHL Innovation Challenge, pharma supply chain, real-time IoT monitoring, temperature control, packaging efficiency, life sciences industry, MaxQ, thermal energy, cold chain, automation, user error, compliance, visibility, logistics, vaccine logistics.

SPEAKERS

Scott Hurley, Balaji Jayakumar

Scott Hurley  00:00

Welcome to Supply Chain Tech Podcast with Roambee. In this episode, we speak with Balaji Jayakumar, the Chief Operating Officer at MaxQ. MaxQ was recently recognized as winner of the 2020 DHL life sciences and healthcare innovation challenge. Balaji shares some of the challenges in pharma and life sciences, packaging industry, the risk of getting condition monitoring wrong, and the role of real time. IoT based asset monitoring, or condition monitoring and compliance with all eyes on the logistics of vaccines throughout the world today, we’re going to discuss Balaji’s work with MaxQ and how they are playing a role in improving pharma, culture and logistics integrity. Balaji, welcome to the podcast. Pleasure to have you here.

Balaji Jayakumar  00:51

Scott, thanks for having me. Appreciate that.

Scott Hurley  00:55

So you come from a strong research background, developing high strength materials. Can you tell us about your professional journey, going from a researcher to building next queue.

Balaji Jayakumar  01:05

Yeah, my, my my graduate school days, my PhD, my masters, were all on developing high strength materials for high impact applications. So mostly worked on body armors and and honeycomb materials for lightweight transport applications. And 2012 is when me and my MaxQ co founders, we came together and we and we wrote a proposal to NASA, proposing a lightweight material for developing cube satellites. So they were looking for a highly insulating, thin material for putting them in space. We went and approached NASA and requested funding. We did not get funded, but we got some good feedback, saying this kind of material has good applications in the life science industry. And then we and that’s kind of the first trigger point where we started this journey into the life sciences market with this high end installation materials and fast forward now being in the industry for about eight years, and MaxQ is currently serving about 450 hospitals here in the US and about 10 blood centers. And we’re also serving different customers across the world, in Canada, Ireland, Japan and so on and so forth.

Scott Hurley  02:23

Wonderful. So what were the challenges that both you and NASA saw in the pharma and life sciences industry around packaging and why were they hard to solve?

Balaji Jayakumar  02:33

So the life science industry revolves around two things, mainly, one is product safety and the other is patient safety. So there is, there is a lot of other things industry is looking into, for example, packaging efficiency, efficiency of cost efficiency of logistics and so on and so forth. But in essence, all that we’re trying to do is to protect the products the best that you can while being efficient. And the problem is, the industry, in some sense, is stuck with, you know, age old packaging, for example, if you take the blood supply chain, typically people are using, you know, beverage coolers by throwing in wet eyes and ensuring that you know the blood is going to be cold inside. It may not be the most precise way of keeping blood and temperature. For example, blood products have to be in a certain precision range for internal use, it has to be one to six degrees Celsius. For transport, it’s one to 10. In some cases, it’s two to eight. So the margin of error is significantly less. It isn’t it’s really important for us to tailor a more solution that is more scientific, validated and proven, and that’s where we saw the opportunity. And then we started providing validated, turnkey solutions for temperature, temperature sensitive biologics.

Scott Hurley  03:55

Okay, great. So, as I mentioned in the intro, you won the 2020, DHL life sciences and healthcare innovation challenge against some pretty formidable competition. What do you think, or what do you think about MaxQ’s innovation stood out from the crowd?

Balaji Jayakumar  04:13

Yeah. So this, this was a competition that went on for about a month or so. I believe they started with a large group of global companies, and then boiled down to 16 semi finalists, and then four finalists, and we emerged. First of all, we were competing with a fantastic roster of fellow competitors, really good technologies came from from all around the world. Our proposal was focused on a serious problem. So we were focused on on two things, improving temperature control logistics and then improving visibility and data. So these two were the very central theme, so to speak. So what we were proposing to in this challenge was, you know, dynamic and. Prediction, which facilitates the ability to apply machine learning and accurately quantify and trigger progressive actions. Now the premise of this is to optimize and automate the temperature control supply chain. So, for example, our patented Max trace platform can alert and accurately predict the viability of a temperature sensitive biological shipment when it is exposed to diverse ambient environments. So, so the innovation basically comes from, you know, providing not just, you know, payload temperature, but calibrating the signals for real time ambience.

Scott Hurley  05:44

Okay, so as part of a journey of pharmaceuticals throughout a cold chain, what type of events or excursions might they be exposed to, or what is it that’s causing problems that you’re trying to sell for?

Balaji Jayakumar  06:02

So if you if you look at a typical shipper, they’re validated against lab standards or Lane based data. For example, you might have heard of a three day shipper, a four day shipper, or a five day shipper. Now that number comes from a certain set of lab based validation or lab based qualification or Lane based data around which the shipper can perform. And in reality, that’s not the case, because you have so many external real time events that you may not be able to qualify or that you may not be able to predict, for example, a package being left in a tarmac you know, that might deem the product to go out of temperature, or an unexpected flight delay, or somebody forgot to turn the data logger or put the data logger, and so there’s so many different things that could go wrong. So even the state of the art packaging solutions currently in the industry uses a combination of insulated shippers, data loggers and GPS asset trackers, and combine them together to you know to ensure and look at you know data throughout the journey. Now the problem is these are segregated information from three different pieces. So this causes information silos because the supply chain is so complex that you want to keep all of the cold chain stakeholders informed and give them the ability to make decisions in real time. So this was a big disconnect, and our goal was to integrate this whole thing and bring every stakeholder together seamlessly.

Scott Hurley  07:40

So you mentioned automation and visibility as part of it, how much of improvement is automating over some of the more manual processes that are required.

Balaji Jayakumar  07:50

That is, that is significantly important, because in this day and age, especially with the most recent pandemic, it is very evident that we are going towards the contactless supply chain, or at least that’s the goal. That’s where we envision the future to be two things. One, you want to have the ability to have the right tools and data to intervene when you have to. The other important thing is to not intervene when you don’t have to. So I think having giving, giving the user or giving the stakeholder these two tools are significantly important, and that’s where we come into the picture, because we if you look at this general decision making process, decisions are made based on payload temperature. If the payload temperature is going above or below a certain threshold, then you are being triggered to take action. And that may not be the right way to look at it, because that’s unilateral, binary information that doesn’t really give you the full picture, because that temperature is affected by so many different things that surrounding it. So that’s where we said, instead of just looking at the payload temperature, we provide you what’s called a thermal energy. So using our proprietary platform, we can show you the amount of thermal energy remaining in a shipper before your payload can go out of temperature. And we can do this in real time. Think of your cell phone battery. Your cell phone battery shows you the amount of charge left before you have to go and charge your cell phone or your fuel tank in your car, that shows you the amount of fuel left you have to go back and refuel. Our technology is similar. We want to show you the thermal life of a shipper, showing you the amount of thermal energy left before it can go off temperature. Now we’re just not just showing you the thermal life. We also want to show you the time remaining before the payload can go off temperature, so you have a window before you can do something about it.

Scott Hurley  09:44

This thermal life algorithm, is this applicable only to your packaging, or it can be, can it be used with other packaging as well?

Balaji Jayakumar  09:51

It’s modular. It can be used with other packaging, other types of shippers. And that’s that’s the best part. So we can take any. Shipper out there and then adapted to our technology. And all we need to know is a bunch of shipper properties. We want to understand the lane. We want to understand the geographic location, and using a combination of all these things we can provide, we can make any shipper into an intelligent ship.

Scott Hurley  10:19

Great. You mentioned in the Innovation Challenge webinar that you’re working with Roambee, what is that Roambee is bringing to the overall solution for your customers?

Balaji Jayakumar  10:34

Roambee has been a fantastic partner, and we went through this whole developmental process with Roambee as a partner, and we’re very excited to work with with Roambee. They bring, they bring the the IoT sensor platform to us. So they are providing us, you know, signals that we need, for example, measuring the temperature location. Those would be the bread and butter. Of you know, what we’re trying to offer. In addition, we also have the capability of offering, you know, tilt, humidity, altitude, shock, all of which are important properties and parameters that’s going to help us evaluate and assess the real time status of payload. And, you know, having the 21 CFR Part 11 compliance on the software on Roambee is platform it helps us provide a chain of custody, and having FA approvals with multitude of different airlines is also very helpful, right?

Scott Hurley  11:34

It’s good to hear. Okay, how much of what your customers are looking for as an improvement in efficiency versus compliance driven?

Balaji Jayakumar  11:50

It’s a it’s a combination. It’s a combination of, you know, improving efficiency and also staying compliant. I think compliance comes first. Your primary goal is to make sure, you know, especially if you’re in the pharma or clinical trial world, you want to make sure you’re following the FDA regulations, and you’re making sure that all your products, shipments and packages, are all in compliance with the guidelines from the FDA. And that’s the most important piece, and that involves, you know, making sure you have chain of custody, making sure you have your recording and measuring temperatures. You’re recording and measuring all the necessary parameters. And the next phase is, of course, efficiency. How efficient are you both in terms of packaging and logistics. So efficiency comes from both, you know, cost and size and space. So if there is a way for you to ship, you know, three boxes instead of five boxes with a more compliant and more effective packaging solution, that’s probably efficiency right there for you. And the one thing that the future of this industry is going in the direction of also visibility and data. So besides just the compliance and efficiency part of it now, visibility is also becoming a piece of the compliance now, because very soon, you’re going to have regulations, or you’re going to have recommendations to have complete visibility of your package in every leg of the supply chain, because irrespective of which logistics or which path you use, your box is going to through, going to go through a bunch of waypoints, a bunch of touches that has to happen for your box or a shipper, to go from point A to point B. It is really important for you to reduce the user error and the number of reduce the number of touches, right?

Scott Hurley  13:42

That makes sense. Okay, so beyond just the technical specs of your packaging of your algorithms clearly has been vetted and shown to be successful by your company doing well and winning this challenge. But what other aspects of your solution do you bring value to your customer beyond just the technical aspects of?

Balaji Jayakumar  14:04

So we are very adaptable with respect to providing customer solutions. So the our innovation came from customer requirements. So we had a series of different customer interactions in different stages of the life of a company. And then we realized that the most important problem, or the most important pain point the industry is facing, is user error. So, you know, switching on and switching off a dialoguer, and then, you know, moving data, data aggregation. So user error was the central pain point that we were trying to address. And one way to address that was to kind of go, go to the root of it and see, okay, how can you make this a contactless supply chain and futuristically, just envisioning, how can you automate the cold chain supply chain in general? So, and that’s where you know. Of the innovation came forth. And one thing we are very cognizant about, and we’re doing consciously, is we don’t want to just show you or show you visibility of the problem. We also want to come in and close the loop. So, for example, by showing the thermal life of a shipper, we show you the amount of thermal energy remaining using which we also show you the amount of time remaining before your temperature. So what can you do about it? So because we have control of the shipper, because we know how the shipper behaves, we have ways to maximize the thermal energy in the shipper. It could be something as simple as throw the shipper in a freezer at minus 20 degree celsius for 24 hours, and you have a charge for the next five days. It is something as simple as that. And this is an information that we control, and then we can provide and distribute this information to the different stakeholders. It could be a logistics provider, it could be your customer, it could be you. It could so we have the capability of sending customized alerts, triggers and notifications so that you can maximize the thermal energy. So we provide you end to end, preventive and corrective action that is also FD order tool. So we, long story short, adaptability is what we bring. We are very flexible to work with customers. It’s not a solution that we’re trying to kind of push, but we want to work with the customer to understand exactly what’s going on and provide the total best solution. There may be customers who may not need the shipper. They probably all they have a shipper, and all we can do is to come and onboard the intelligence in their shipper. But there are probably customers are looking for, you know, a turnkey solution, and we are also set up to be this one stop shop, providing efficient the whole nine yards for them.

Scott Hurley  16:45

Do you think today’s environment, with eyes of the world on vaccine logistics, that this is going to increase the demand for your services?

Balaji Jayakumar  16:57

I think so. I strongly believe so. And we are seeing a lot of traction happening, or the or the most recent times, and it’s, it’s what is missing in the market is the best way to integrate these technologies and provide it in a way that it’s useful to the customers. So one of, one of the hesitations that customer have is, you know, which is, you know, adapting to a new technology. It’s going to have road bumps, it’s going to have, you know, roadblocks, things of that nature. So we want to be as seamless as we can in our offering. So catering to the problem of the customer, rather than catering your solution to the customer, I think that makes a huge difference. And and it especially after this pandemic and the kind of issues that this has caused. Like I said, it’s the supply chain is going contactless at least. That’s where the future has to be focused on, and that’s where the automation has to be. So our goal is, you know, in the future, every shipment or every box has to be autonomous, so the box has to raise its hands and call for help and and we should be able to send automatic triggers and notifications to the stakeholders to take care of it and maximize the energy.

Scott Hurley  18:15

Very good. All right, any final thoughts you’d like to share about how pharma companies can make their cold chain feature ready.

Balaji Jayakumar  18:23

Yeah, so one of the things that we focus on at MaxQ is providing simple solutions that are seamless. Simplicity is one thing that we focus on all the time, and then we’re also focused, since you’re providing data, you’re providing intelligence, we’re also highly focusing on reliability of our data. So the healthcare supply chain, the pharma world, you know, it will be driven by, you know, a couple of things. One is intelligence, the other is integration. And you know, our innovation hits the core of, you know, these two things, especially with the recent pandemic. You know, the clinical trials are becoming more decentralized. You know, it’s, it’s demanding, not just packaging solutions, but more smarter, intelligent packaging solutions. So, you know, CROs and CMOS, they all have visibility to the point of care levels. But you know, we also want to ensure logistic partners, the three, pls, they’re all integrated with the packaging providers, you know, on MaxQ’s intelligent core systems, so that you’re not only predictive, but also prescriptive in providing solutions. And this is going to result in, you know, ultimately result in product safety and patient safety. Great. Well, thank you, Balaji.

Scott Hurley  19:36

For sharing the innovative work that MaxQ is doing in your technologies. It’s great to hear how smart packaging combined with your algorithms and real time condition monitoring are coming together to help build a safer pharma supply chain. It’s pleasure speaking with you today.

Balaji Jayakumar  19:53

Thank you. Scott, thanks for having me. Appreciate the time. Take care.

Scott Mears  19:57

Hi, my name is Scott Mears, and I’m one of the hosts of the Supply Chain Tech Podcast with Roambee. On this podcast we talk to supply chain heroes from around the world about everything, ranging from the disruptions related to supply chains, their personal experiences with tracking technologies, strategies to build resilience, and much, much more. We already have some recommended videos for you to the side of me, and if any of this sounds interesting to you, do subscribe to our Youtube channel and hit the bell icon so you don’t miss another Roambee video. I’ll see you next time.