subject: Shipping Medical Goods Which Are Temperature Sensitive [print this page] Sometimes, a fulfillment company has to ship goods which are more important than the regular packages full of dry cargo that they normally ship. Instead, there may be times when they are called upon to ship goods like medical material or pharmaceutical products. These are things which people's lives may depend on, so it is critical that they are shipped with as much care as possible. However, these types of goods come with extra challenges when shipping them, because they can easily be negatively affected by the temperature.
Almost every type of medical goods can be damaged if they're exposed to or stored in high temperature air. For example, whole blood, one of the most commonly shipped medical products, has an extremely short half life, but when stored above its proper temperature even that disappears, and it can become unusable for transfusion. Medical specimens which need to be tested can be biologically damaged if stored in higher temperatures. Even pharmaceutical products can often spoil, becoming harmful or at least useless if they're not kept in a cooled environment when in transit.
This is why you need a courier company that has the right kind of equipment to ship your goods. This goes almost without saying, because in order to have the licenses and permits required to ship medical material, a courier will have to demonstrate that they have the available equipment, but it still bears reinforcing. Temperature controlled transportation units and storage is the key to being able to transport medical material which could become damaged if kept in warmer temperatures.
When you're shipping goods which are medical in nature, the way that they are packed is also very important. No matter how good the courier company is, and how good the equipment they are using is, there are still going to be times when the cargo is exposed to open air. This is why the packaging of the goods in properly insulated containers and coolers is also a crucial part of the process.
When shipping medial material (or anything which is sensitive to temperature) there are also procedures which need to be observed. The key is making sure that the goods themselves are out of a controlled environment for as little time as possible. This means making sure that paperwork is always completed before trucks start loading or unloading, and using temperature controlled bays to load and unload whenever possible.
