The shipment is the evidence.
In every other sector, a delivery ends when the box arrives. Here it ends when your quality team can prove what happened to it — who held it, for how long, under what conditions, and whether anything about that is in question.
Not one sector, six different problems
"Healthcare logistics" covers a vial of vaccine, a pallet of dressings and a loan kit of surgical instruments. What each one needs from a freight provider has almost nothing in common.
control
& traceability
permit
custody
critical
Five layers between your product and a write-off
No single control saves a consignment. Each layer catches what the one outside it missed, and the outermost is the one people forget: if it was not recorded, you cannot prove any of the others held.
Custody records, condition data, deviation reports and proof of delivery, retained and retrievable long after the shipment closes.
Named handlers, defined handover steps, and escalation that reaches a person rather than a queue when something reads wrong.
Vehicle, container and routing chosen against the product's requirement, not against whatever was available that day.
Secondary and tertiary packaging with a stated performance, packed to a method rather than to whoever is on shift.
Which is the only one of these five that cannot be replaced when the others fail.
The only supply chain that has to come back
Trial supply is the one healthcare flow where the return leg matters as much as the outbound. Unused investigational product has to be recovered, reconciled against what was dispensed, and destroyed under witness. A gap in that count is a finding.
Picked against the protocol, labelled per country and released for despatch.
Delivered to the investigator site with condition data on arrival.
Issued to the patient, recorded against the subject and the visit.
Unused and returned product collected from site under custody.
Counted against what was shipped and what was dispensed. Gaps investigated.
Destroyed to your instruction, with certification returned to the sponsor.
Stock that circulates instead of selling
Device logistics breaks the normal rule that inventory moves one way. Loan kits go out, come back, get reprocessed and go out again — and a set that is not back in time is a cancelled procedure, not a late delivery.
Loan kits & instrument sets
Booked out against a procedure date, tracked to the theatre and recovered afterwards on a schedule that assumes the case may overrun.
Consignment & field stock
Inventory held at hospital or with a rep, counted and replenished without waiting for someone to notice it has gone.
Implantables
High value, lot-traceable and frequently required at short notice. Handled with the security and the paperwork that implies.
Returns & reprocessing
Recovered sets routed for cleaning, inspection and re-sterilisation, with the turnaround counted because it decides fleet size.
Send your requirements before your rate request.
Product classification, storage requirement, documentation you need back and the standard you are audited against. We will tell you plainly what we can support, what we would arrange through a qualified partner, and what falls outside what we should be doing at all.
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