Sustainability
Embrace sustainability to transform business performance
CLIENT STORY
Cooling the last mile of vaccine delivery
Deploying vaccines globally that keep people safe from any number of infections is a complicated process that requires close coordination among supply chain partners, with seamless handoffs and effective logistics. Many vaccines require cold storage, which can be difficult to maintain. Vaccines that aren’t cooled properly can lose their effectiveness, create waste, and could mean the difference between life and death for people in need.
Sure Chill has developed a cooling technology that harnesses a unique property of water and solar power to provide continuous cooling for long periods of time. PA and Sure Chill identified an opportunity to harness this technology and develop a portable, Cloud-connected, and sustainable cooler that can transport lifesaving supplies to the most remote parts of the world. PA provided end-to-end innovation capabilities, including growth strategy, manufacturing and process design, sustainability and supply chain, digital, product development and engineering expertise.
Beyond vaccines, the cooler can be used to distribute medical items that need to be kept cool including blood used in transfusions and insulin, maintaining them for three days between 2 to 8˚C. By applying circular design principles, we’ve ensured the device can be completely disassembled – either for repair, sub systems reuse, or recycling.
Key successes
Identified multiple use cases for a portable device that would improve vaccine transportation and storage solutions
Provided end-to-end product innovation, prototyping a new solution in just four months
Identified implications of trade-offs in the design process and optimised performance to meet sustainability and cost goals
Overcame technical challenges by bringing to bear the capabilities at our Global Innovation and Technology Centre
Transporting and distributing vaccines is always difficult but in the developing world, it’s a huge challenge. Vaccines may need to traverse challenging roads on their path to remote health care clinics and communities. Clinics may or may not have access to static refrigerators that could extend vaccine life, while power outages could easily spoil supplies. In addition, communities may need to be vaccinated on a rolling basis, compounding these challenges.
Improving vaccine equity is an important goal of many leading government agencies and organisations. Making it easier to distribute vaccines around the world can reduce the barriers to achieving this goal.
Today, there are thousands of Sure Chill medical refrigerators in over 49 countries around the world. Their refrigerators are trusted by WHO, Ministries of Health, Hospitals and health centres to keep their vaccines and other lifesaving supplies perfectly chilled and protected from spoilage.
In South Sudan, Sure Chill’s technology is at the heart of the Liwolo Clinic. As the only clinic with a medical refrigerator within a 40-mile radius, it’s helping diagnose people faster and ensuring they’re prescribed the right medicine. And in the Democratic Republic of Congo, being able to refrigerate vaccines was vital in helping wipe out diseases such as Avian Plague and Newcastle Disease.
Yet Sure Chill wanted to go one step further. They wanted to create a portable device that could be placed in the most remote parts of the world, where there isn’t any existing infrastructure in place. Together, we set about developing a robust, Cloud-connected portable cooler, that will bring lifesaving supplies to even more people.
We worked with PA to develop the platform technology for an entirely new product range with enormous potential. PA has a unique ability to guide a client from formulating a blue-sky vision to creating a finished product that’s aligned with market demand in just a short period of time.
At PA, we can bring expert teams together and develop complex solutions at pace, making us well-placed for this work. For example, we provided expertise in medical device design, regulatory and supply chain expertise to enable the UK government to secure enough ventilators during the COVID-19 pandemic. We also designed an innovative decentralised water treatment facility that leverages the Internet of Things (IoT) and circular economy principles to provide clean and safe water to unserved communities.
After experiencing an unexpected technical hurdle with mobility, we rapidly tested potential solutions. We took a fail-fast approach, looking to identify the solutions that showed promise quickly, before investing time to do more detailed tests – both through physical and computer modelling. This allowed us to rule out all but two of our possible solutions, and then deep dive into those, one of which resolved our challenge. We found that Sure Chill could build a smaller, less expensive unit overall that would be easier to carry and use, without sacrificing any usable cooling volume or performance in the field.
When we encountered a technical performance challenge, PA brainstormed solutions with us and tested them in a methodical way. Their approach to problem solving is extremely elegant and reduces process waste and cost.
Next, our experts in digital design and electronics designed a connected solution. Once manufactured, it will allow users to access critical insights into vaccine condition and send this information to the cloud in real time, so that others involved in running the cold chain could access it. This will allow users to monitor vaccine temperatures, determine if units have been opened and closed or if units have been dropped. This allowed us to identify new innovative business models.
PA has enabled us to embrace radical growth. By providing end-to-end innovation and new growth strategies, they’ve given us a route to market and the tools to build sales and market share faster.
We’re now helping the client explore a “cold as a service” offering to drive new revenues, reduce vaccine spoilage and provide faster response times. Instead of making a one-time product sale, the offering will mean Sure Chill can lease, maintain and upgrade its coolers, helping users maximise the value of these products and extend their lifespans.
Sure Chill now has a prototyped product that will act as a building block for a future range of active/passive cooling devices of varying sizes and performance parmeters. The final solution offers flexible cooling options, ensures uniform temperatures and is easily repairable. It also provides connectivity and logs data, providing users with confidence that temperatures are being maintained. That means vaccines stay chilled and effective, saving more lives.
Discover how PA and Sure Chill identified an opportunity to develop a portable, Cloud-connected, and #sustainable portable cooler that can transport lifesaving supplies to the most remote parts of the world.
