UPS Healthcare Fulfillment Centers Continue to Grow And What Effect Could This Have on the Future Further Changing the Pharmacy Benefit Business?

Before I got into healthcare I spent about 25 years in logistics and about the time I left the industry, this trend was already beginning and it used to be where the shipments were created on the platform or dock of the common carrier and now it has grown to where the common carriers and parcel carriers have built facilities to do it. Last year UPS reported a number of these facilities and when you continue to read further with the article in the WSJ, it’s growing.

UPS Expanding Healthcare Focus With Giant Warehouses for Temperature Sensitive Drugs and Vaccines

UPS to spend $100 million on 4 New Global Distribution Centers To Serve Biotech, Pharma and Medical Device Companies

Fedex has their biotech division to where you can track a shipment, even in the air and for the Life Sciences folks it tells the entire story of how it was handled, in other words did it take a hard bounce anywhere. Do you want to track your shipments..you can do that too with Twitter…

TrackThis: Twitter on Drugs for Mail Order Prescriptions…Track Fedex, UPS, DHL Packages…

CryoPort and FedEx Solution for Shipping Temperature-sensitive Medicines and Biomaterials

What is interesting is that actual pharmacists are on board filling prescriptions too, so what’s next one might ask, is where the next pharmacy benefit managers might move and call home? Who knows but as they are integrating with various drug and device companies, about the only thing missing at this point would be the analytics. They already have internal wellness coaches so that frame is there, so I guess time will tell. BD

Health coaches nag employees to better care - UPS offers service to employees

At UPS's Louisville headquarters, company pharmacists fill 4,000 orders a day for insulin pumps and other supplies from customers of Medtronic Inc., MDT +1.61% the Minneapolis medical-device company.

UPS pharmacists in Louisville log into Medtronic's system, fill the orders with devices stocked on site, and ship them to patients, by UPS, of course.

It is one part of a growing reach by UPS—along with rivals FedEx Corp., FDX +0.40% and Deutsche Post AG's DPW.XE +1.23% shipping division DHL—into the business of running supply chains for pharmaceutical and medical-device companies.

The parcel-delivery companies are investing in mega warehouses that service multiple pharmaceutical companies at once, with freezers for medicines and high-security vaults for controlled substances. They're betting that the investments will be offset by clients willing to pay a premium for specialized handling of sensitive products.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303379204577475513549926528.html