UPS® Premier Platinum brings a new shine to healthcare logistics

Biologics are widely viewed as the future of healthcare. This exciting frontier in treatments promises healing for a host of illnesses, especially modern killers like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease.

On top of their medicinal properties, these products are rare and valuable.

The emerging cell and gene therapies, for example, can be one-of-a-kind treatments. They’re developed from a patient’s unique organic material, then customized to treat that person’s specific medical condition. A single dose of such precious medicines can cost more than a million dollars.

The logistics challenge is that biologics and new cell and gene therapies must be kept at exacting low temperatures from manufacturing facility to distribution center to patient. The efficacy of these medicines … and the health of patients … wholly depends on the quality of the cold chain and network delivering them.

 A UPS Premier primer

The network lanes and lessons that successfully took COVID-19 vaccines to the world, evolved into a new delivery channel – UPS Premier.

The hallmarks of UPS Premier?

• Prioritized handling. Enhanced sensor-based technology and live 24/7 monitoring tools give network operators a way to prioritize shipments, often designating ‘first-on, first-off’ status on transport vehicles. Premier technology can also enable seamless fast-lane transport across borders and through customs.
• Live 24/7 monitoring. Our logistics experts monitor UPS Premier shipments around the clock and stand ready to enact customized contingency measures. Recovery begins immediately for delayed packages to minimize temperature excursions and maintain the efficacy of the payload.
• Enhanced visibility. UPS Premier Gold and Silver already provide customers with visibility of patient-critical shipments within the UPS network using mesh and RFID technologies.

 Platinum, rare and valuable

We're soon to roll out UPS Premier Platinum, and it enhances your ability to securely deliver high-value medicines and treatments sensitive to temperature fluctuations. The platinum service level offers:

•  A new visibility layer, inside and outside the UPS® network. Thanks to its’ cellular service connection, a platinum package is visible anywhere there is cell phone coverage.
• Temperature sensors. Platinum packages will also include an option for temperature sensing indicators that can alert a customer when a package’s payload temperature may be moving outside its safe range, requiring immediate intervention and recovery for troubled shipments.

 Customers will not need special packaging to use UPS Premier Platinum. The technology is built into the label, about the size of a postcard. It can even make a positive environmental impact. The technology is reusable. 

Platinum raises the bar

Just as innovative therapies and medicines are establishing better outcomes for patients, UPS Healthcare is harnessing new technologies to ensure that critical shipments reliably make it to their destinations on time and in the right condition.

Customers will find UPS Premier Platinum to be among the world’s most advanced means of transporting high-value medicines and shipments to clinics and patients. It’s the platinum standard – state-of-the-art healthcare logistics at its best.

Start a conversation with an expert today to see how UPS Premier can impact your supply chain.

Jim Poole is UPS Healthcare Strategy Director