Deeply involved in revolutionising the way pharmaceutical supply chains operate, Iceland-based Controlant is on a mission to create systems that produce zero waste for the world’s leading drug makers and the environment. Here, we sat down with chief quality officer Anna Karlsdóttir to find out how.
Anna, could you tell us a bit more about your background?
I’m Icelandic and have a master’s degree in mechanical engineering. I’ve been in the tech industry for my whole career, working as a consulting engineer in designing a geothermal power plant in Iceland, a software engineer developing solutions for mobile phones, a technical director for a company developing and manufacturing energy management system for seagoing vessels.
What inspired you to join Controlant?
The opportunity to work in a new industry that is disrupting one of the world’s most critical supply chains, and to be part of a company with a clear purpose and a clear vision where sustainability is a driving force inspired me to join Controlant.
I wanted to take on a new challenge, and with the team at Controlant, we are contributing to tackling one of the most pressing issues of our time: climate change.
The fact that we do that through constant innovation and product development to bring new solutions to the market for the pharma supply chain is even more motivating.
How would you describe Controlant in a few words?
Controlant is a global leader in the digital transformation of pharma supply chains. We empower the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies to reduce waste and ensure patient safety through real-time visibility and digital transformation.
Our vision is to deliver zero-waste supply chains for our partners and the planet through digitalisation, automation and transformation of the pharma supply chain.
We do this through our pharma-validated real-time visibility platform, advanced IoT devices, and 24/7 services which are trusted by many of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies and logistics service providers to track and monitor global shipments of medicines and vaccines.
Our solutions enable them to make their operations significantly more reliable, cost-effective and sustainable. Ultimately, our solutions help get life-saving medicines to more patients, curing more diseases.
What makes Controlant different?
Our unwavering commitment to our vision of zero-waste pharma supply chains, our dedicated focus on the pharma industry, and our incredibly talented, and dedicated team is what sets us apart, and drives our success.
Sustainability is at the heart of everything we do. Our greatest impact is through our solutions and our collaboration with our customers in the pharma industry.
By gaining real-time visibility into their supply chains, enterprise pharma companies and logistics service providers can significantly improve efficiency, reduce the need for safety stocks, and ultimately ensure that their products reach their destination on time—safely and sustainably.
Our dedication to our zero-waste vision is also apparent in the choice we have made to offer reusable IoT devices instead of single-use devices. This saves the planet millions of IoT devices in emissions every year.
The impact of more shipments reaching their destination without fail on the first try is significant. It translates to less safety stock, and reduced emissions from additional transportation, which in turn translates to less resources required and a reduced environmental impact.
By opting for Controlant’s reusable loggers, instead of single-use ones, 92 per cent of emissions have been saved for pharma. Put differently, avoided emissions from electronic waste by opting for re-usable IoT devices amounting to 33,615 tonnes of CO2eq.
What role could Controlant play in helping the industry achieve this goal?
The next frontier in real-time visibility for pharma supply chains is full end-to-end visibility, all the way from production down to patient through monitoring and tracking of medicines and vaccines at the unit or asset level.
Our existing solutions have brought much-needed visibility at the pallet level, and our latest innovation, the Saga Card, is designed to bring visibility down to secondary packing, including cases and cartons.
By providing the pharma industry with end-to-end visibility into the supply chain, they will have the visibility that allows them to effectively manage inventory, and significantly improve the efficiency of their operations.
Saga Card is an important milestone on our innovation journey and in the digital transformation of pharma supply chains. The credit-card-sized IoT device will serve as an enabler in delivering the next generation of increasingly complex and sensitive treatments to millions of people around the world and bringing us closer to realising our vision of zero-waste pharma supply chains.
