Drug Shipping Protocols Followed By My Canadian Pharmacy
Being an online pharmacy, we need to observe a large number of conditions that should be in place in order for the drugstore to operate as smoothly as any brick-and-mortar drug retailer. And since we mostly deal with overseas drug manufacturers, one of the problems we need to face is drug transportation, which requires a lot of conditions to be met in order to be safe and compliant with the industry’s requirements.
My Canadian Pharmacy: Safer Drug Transporting
Being a purely online pharmacy, we save large sums of money by not maintaining an actual warehouse. We engage the represented by the storage and distribution of pharmaceutical products, including diagnostic and temperature controlled products of + 2 °, + 8 °, + 25 ° C or dry ice.
In general, the storage conditions of a drug are a determining parameter for the quality of medicinal products during the entire life cycle, including storage, distribution and sale to the public. There are very specific ministerial decrees that regulate the practice of distributing medicines for human use. For example, whoever holds the medicinal product is responsible for it until the transfer to another person and secondly the responsibility of the correct conservation in the transport phases is attributed to the person who commits the transport.
Maintaining a specific temperature range throughout the drug and medication transport process is essential to safeguard the characteristics of many health products. Eliminating any possibility of thermal shock means in fact preserving the integrity of medicines.
To ensure constant maintenance along the entire cold chain route, the transport used for drug shipping for My Canadian Pharmacy uses insulated vehicles to set and maintain the temperature in the required range (-50 ° / + 2 ° C, + 2 / + 8 ° C and + 8 / + 25 ° C). The thermal conditions are monitored through certified data loggers.
Deliveries take place in two transport options designed to further increase shipping efficiency and meet the different needs of the requesting structures:
- the full load transport has the characteristic of being an organized ad hoc shipment on the different needs and allows the delivery and transport of drugs in a safe, fast and optimized way, with the possibility to load only the customer’s product on the vehicle.
- the dedicated but continuous transport allows the delivery and transport of medicines, ensuring the possibility of collection at the agreed time and delivering without intermediate stops throughout the journey.
The transport of medicines for human use is of particular importance; at each point of distribution of medicines a qualified and responsible person should be designated, with authority and responsibility also extended to transportation to the immediately following distribution point, to ensure a system of quality.
Requirements for safe transportation that we meet
Medicines must be transported following a series of prescriptions that become indispensable for their safety so that:
- their identification document is not lost;
- do not contaminate or are contaminated with other products or materials;
- adequate measures are foreseen in case of product spillage or breakage of containers;
- they are safe, i.e. not subjected to direct heat, cold, light, humidity or other unfavorable conditions, nor to attack by micro-organisms or insects.
Promiscuous transport with products that may in any way represent a danger to the safety or efficacy of the drugs is forbidden. In addition, medicines with a broken seal, damaged packaging, or suspected contamination should be withdrawn from the stock of salable goods and must be kept in an area designated for rejected products clearly marked so that they cannot be sold by mistake that they can contaminate other goods. Such products must be destroyed in accordance with the regulations concerning tax, waste disposal or other laws and this destruction must be kept for at least five years.
All vehicles used to transport medicines must be equipped, in the transport compartment of:
- plants suitable for guaranteeing a temperature at which, in line with the stability test indications, the characteristics of the products are not altered;
- adequate insulation, except in exceptional and documented cases of transport in situations of urgency or necessity, provided that they do not result in risks of deterioration of medicines; medicinal products for which controlled storage temperature is required should therefore be transported by special and appropriate means, through all points of the distribution chain.
To this end, to satisfy these requirements, refrigerated means or separate packaging must be used in packages suitable for maintaining the temperature in relation to delivery times. If a controlled storage temperature is envisaged, drugs for clinical trials and free samples must also be transported to the person responsible for administration, in compliance with the aforementioned conditions.