The hospital pharmacy of the TU Munich, the pharmacy of the Klinikum rechts der Isar, supplies around 1,100 beds of the hospital and two external hospitals with 30 and 400 beds respectively with a wide range of medicines. The pharmacy plays a central role for the hospital and patient care. Pharmaceutical logistics encompasses all services and processes in the pharmacy that ensure that the right medicine is available for the right patient on time and in optimum quality. It is essential that all technical and legal requirements for pharmaceutical logistics are met during storage and transportation. This naturally also applies to the transportation of medicines and preparations that require refrigeration. The Pharmaceutical Logistics department of the hospital pharmacy coordinates all drug orders, is responsible for proper storage and supplies the wards with the requested drugs in good time.

High demands on pharmaceutical logistics

The hospital's list of medicines currently contains 1,200 preparations that must be kept in stock in a certain quantity at all times. On average, the listed medicines are requested from the pharmacy around 350,000 times a year. The individual wards order their required medicines three times a week, while the intensive care units and the emergency medicine area are supplied daily. The pharmacy uses a picking machine for regular deliveries, which distributes around two thirds of all listed medicines directly into the transport containers intended for the wards. This involves up to 3,000 packs per dispensing day, which are picked into around 150 transport containers. The containers are then checked, labeled with the recipient's address, sealed and handed over to the central hospital transport service in container trucks.

"Around ten percent of the medicines, including many high-priced preparations, that we send to the wards and to our various hospitals have to be stored and transported under refrigeration. Particularly in summer, it was not always easy to keep the temperatures constant over a longer period of time with the transport boxes we had been using. We were therefore looking for a new container system that was suitable for safe refrigerated transportation. We attached great importance to the fact that the manufacturer had already certified the constant cooling capacity of the transport containers, as we did not want to go to the time and expense of having this certified ourselves. It was also important to us to use a reusable solution for sustainability reasons," says Martina Fischer, specialist pharmacist for clinical pharmacy at Klinikum rechts der Isar.

Convincing medication transport solution

While researching a suitable cool box for the in-house transportation of medicines, the specialist pharmacist discovered the Bito reusable containers with thermal insulation insert and also spoke to other stores that were already using the containers and had recommended the solution to others. "The Bito system convinced us for many reasons," explains Martina Fischer. "The containers are suitable for the pharmaceutical sector and are also certified for refrigerated transport, so that the safe process for transporting our medicines that require refrigeration is guaranteed. They can also be securely sealed. As a reusable container, the box can be used again and again and therefore remains in our transport logistics cycle and contributes to sustainability. Compared to other systems, we were also impressed by the low empty weight. We also liked the fact that we were able to have the transport containers printed directly with our pharmacy logo, as consistency is important to us."

The individual wards, intensive care units and the emergency medicine department order their medication requirements from the hospital pharmacy. The refrigerated goods are picked by hand into the reusable MB containers with thermal insulation inserts and registered using a scanner system. The boxes are then filled with the cold packs, securely closed with seals and provided with the corresponding address label. An in-house transport service receives the addressed and clearly identifiable cool boxes and transports them to the individual stations in container trolleys.

Correctly cooled in all relevant temperature ranges

For the temperature range of two to eight degrees Celsius, the pharmacy uses MB reusable containers with thermal insulation inserts. The pharmacy has 200 of these containers in use, and around 50 of the refrigerated transport boxes are regularly in circulation each day. As some pharmaceutical products also have to be stored at sub-zero temperatures, the hospital pharmacy also uses Bito Pharma boxes designed for these temperature ranges for pharmaceutical refrigerated transportation. Pharmaceutical contents are distributed safely and reliably to the various wards and buildings in these boxes at temperatures as low as minus 18 degrees Celsius. The Pharmaboxes are used once or twice a week.

Martina Fischer: "We are very satisfied with both systems. The inlays are easy to clean and can therefore be kept hygienically clean. Handling has also become very smooth since we started using the two boxes. As the hospital pharmacy of a university hospital, which has to supply a wide range of often highly sensitive and sometimes very expensive pharmaceuticals, it is a top priority to ensure maximum safety during storage and transportation. This applies both to the sensitive properties and quality of the products and to ensuring that no unauthorized person can access the goods. We are constantly subject to strict, regular inspections. By using the two containers, we can meet the high security requirements."

High safety requirements are met

The Bito-MB reusable container with thermo-insulation set and the Bito-Pharmabox comply with the European Good Distribution Practice (GDP) guidelines for the shipment of medicines. They are not only a safe and sustainable transport solution. As a robust reusable container system, they can be reused hundreds of times; even if a medicine leaks in the box, the washable insulating inserts can be cleaned easily and the container and inlay can still be used in accordance with hygiene standards.

The article appeared in materialfluss 6/22.