Pharmaceutical logistics project wins award

The pilot project “temperature-monitored pharmaceutical logistics with RFID” conducted by the DHL Innovation Initiative was honored with the “RFID Journal Award 2007” at the recent RFID Journal Live conference in Orlando FL. The RFID application developed by DHL in cooperation with partners IBM and Infratab was nominated in the category “Best Use of RFID in a Service.”

Pharmaceutical products generally consist of temperature-sensitive ingredients that can lose their effectiveness when placed in an environment that is too cold or too hot. The DHL Innovation Initiative developed a way to monitor temperature-sensitive pharmaceutical products during transport. RFID sensor tags made Infratab monitor the temperature of pharmaceutical shipments. The stored measurement data can be read by a RFID reader without physical contact using radio waves. In the process, the shipment does not have to be opened.

The link to the database is handled by IBM systems. Thanks to the new service, pharmaceutical companies can react to temperatures that exceed or fall below limits even while the shipment is being transported.