UPS Healthcare has announced that UPS Premier – its shipping service combining a new level of tracking, prioritisation and recovery for patient-critical, time- and temperature-sensitive shipments – is now available to customers in Singapore.
“Visibility and traceability are essential to prioritising the life-saving medications our customers ship and their customers need,” UPS Healthcare president Wes Wheeler said. “The difference between life and death for patients often hinges on the ability to quickly ship and precisely track, monitor and locate medications.
“Over the past couple of years, UPS Premier has already helped enable the delivery of hundreds of millions of COVID-19 vaccines around the world with near-perfect on-time delivery. We’re excited to be adding another industry-leading service to the wide range of products and solutions available to UPS customers in Singapore.”
Of the three levels in the UPS Premier service portfolio available globally, UPS Premier Gold is now available in Singapore. UPS Premier Gold offers acceleration and ‘first-in first-off’ prioritisation, and near real-time monitoring made possible through state-of-the-art proprietary mesh sensors built into the package labelling to narrow visibility down to three metres within the UPS network.
Other benefits include an expedited package recovery process that allows the shipper to configure specific handling instructions should an intervention be required, plus capacity for same day redelivery. UPS Premier provides temperature-controlled shipping in environments spanning ambient to frozen, depending on specific shipment requirements.
The entire process is overseen 24/7 by live agents with intimate knowledge of the shipment’s requirements ensuring medications remain compliant, preventing spoilage and loss of product, and reducing costs associated with reshipments.
“As Singapore continues to establish itself as a regional leader in the healthcare and biomedical sciences sectors. How we embrace these needs and continue to meet customer expectations are evolving too,” Chika Imakita, managing director of UPS Singapore, said.
“At the heart of every UPS innovation is customer experience, and this is never more relevant than when we’re also delivering for a patient. By combining visibility, traceability, control, recovery and international brokerage prioritisation into one service for the first time, UPS Premier redefines what is possible for the critical logistics industry, while taking customer experience to a whole new level.”
The global market for biologic therapeutic drugs is expected to grow in value from $285.5 billion in 2020 to $421.8 billion by 20251 . This growth is mirrored in Asia Pacific, where the biologics market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 9.2% from 2020 to 2026, accelerated by factors such as the increase in biologics therapy2 . Hence, innovations in biologics, specialty pharmaceuticals, and medications genetically personalised for each patient’s needs are driving significant demand for precision logistics to support more patient-critical, time- and temperature-sensitive products.
Critical healthcare packages that utilise UPS Premier Gold typically include tissue samples, biopsies, implantable medical devices for scheduled surgeries, and personally formulated medications.
