Shaping medical supply chains to fit the needs of women’s health

Women visit doctors and take tests more frequently than men. In fact, the CDC reports that women are 33 percent more likely to visit the doctor than men, and 100 percent better at maintaining screening and preventive care.

This is especially true for reproductive health issues where early detection of conditions significantly improves the quality of life for patients.

Once doctor’s offices have collected the necessary samples and specimens for testing, the process of getting items safely to laboratories takes an extra level of security, efficiency and accuracy for women’s health.

Medical specimens require special handling, quick turnaround times and elimination of mistakes in the supply chain. Any mistakes, such as misplacing a pap smear, carries health risks as well as significantly increases costs.

The doctor’s office has to cover the cost of re-testing patients that need to come back for retests due to misplaced samples. Women’s medical tests are more expensive than men’s since many of them have to be performed by a doctor rather than a nurse.

Having secure and controlled access systems in medical supply chains is paramount to ensure critical healthcare procedures have efficient testing, sample integrity and speed.

To safeguard against errors, a growing number of offices are now using technology that provides real-time access controls for collection boxes and real-time visibility of inventory and the status every step of the way.

A secure and seamless transfer

BoxLock’s IoT devices and cloud-based platform create a secure and effective system for the on-time transfer of medical specimens and samples from doctor’s offices to laboratories.

BoxLock’s secure and rugged smart padlocks are used for collection boxes as items await a pickup from couriers. Doctor’s offices scan barcodes on the items before placing them into the boxes with the padlock’s integrated barcode scanner.

With cellular connectivity the locks can be deployed anywhere to securely transfer assets in the medical supply chain at scale.

The scanning creates instant visibility of inventory, and the devices share the event details to a robust, cloud-based suite with access control, audit log and inventory management tools.

Laboratories and couriers can use APIs from the cloud-based BoxLock platform for real-time visibility of items available for pickup at mobile and fixed collection sites. With this visibility, labs and their couriers can input pickups as soon as they become available into route management software systems to optimally dispatch drivers.

When drivers arrive at a doctor’s office they use a unique identifier with a QR code to open permissioned BoxLock devices. The barcode scanning facilitates tracking, date and time stamping features that create an immutable log of every step in the logistics process.

Any medical test, and especially ones that can only be performed by a doctor, can now be transferred between doctor’s offices and laboratories with this seamless and secure method. For more information about how BoxLock technology can benefit healthcare providers, visit www.getboxlock.com/healthcare