Technology a key tool in successful clinical supply management

Arena International Event Group’s CTS Europe conference took place in Barcelona, Spain on 24-25 February 2026. Credit: Arena International Events Group / Athanasios Psimadis

The clinical trial supply chain comprises of many stakeholders, including the originating pharma company or biotech, vendors, logistics companies, contract development and manufacturing organisations (CDMOs), and more. For these stakeholders to operate harmoniously and orchestrate a smooth supply chain that can respond agilely to shifting circumstances, end-to-end visibility of the supply chain is of paramount importance.

A supply chain can only function well with the right levels of oversight. Without this, shipment delays, over-and-under supply of biologics, and wastage are all issues that can emerge, delay and even wholly disrupt a clinical trial. To mitigate unexpected issues, technology has an increasing role to play in the clinical trial supply chain, both in forecasting changes or issues as simple as a road closure caused by adverse weather in a country with fragile infrastructure, to shifting supply and demand necessities depending on a clinical trial’s enrolment status.

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Along with the value of strong communication and relationship building between stakeholders, technology’s role in the clinical supply chain was a recurrent topic of discussion at Arena International Events Group’s Clinical Trial Supply (CTS) Europe conference, which took place in Barcelona, Spain, on 24 and 25 February.

Planning for breaks in routine

Kamal Amin during his presentation at CTS Europe. Credit: Arena International Events Group / Athanasios Psimadis

During a fireside chat on the main stage on the second day of CTS, clinical supply head Kamal Amin emphasised the importance of making use of predictive data analytics and forecasting to be aware of how shifting geopolitical realities could impact the clinical supply for different countries’ trial sites.

Amin says: “With the Ukraine war, for example, two months before it started, we knew there was a build-up of military on the borders; technology could have been used to anticipate that and say, if we have sites here, we better supply them, because for the next few months, it’s going to be really challenging to get product in place.”

More routinely, Amin highlights that during holiday seasons such as Christmas, shipments may be more liable to be delayed due to wider backlogs on the supply chain caused by a fluctuation in gifts being sent in the mail – another factor that can be addressed with forecast and modelling technologies to predict shifts needed to ensure the clinical supply chain is not adversely impacted.

“We can anticipate and mitigate these risks quite easily by sending more supplies to those sites in good time, given they may be shut during those time periods,” Amin explains.

Amin’s conclusion is that such technologies help with reactivity, which he says is critical for the clinical supply chain. Without such protocols in place, even a simple site closure that has not been accounted for in advance can result in the damage of a temperature- or time-sensitive biologics’ shipment.

Real-time monitoring of temperature-sensitive biologics

During a presentation on the CTS mainstage on the conference’s second day, Dr Anne Stolle, key account manager EMEA for Sensitech, outlined the company’s real-time monitoring approach to temperature-sensitive biologics such as cell and gene therapies (CGTs).

The company’s cloud-based temperature monitoring platform currently has integrations in place with various interactive response technology (IRT) systems for clinical trial management, with further integrations upcoming.

Stolle explains: “The next integration is in place between those IRT systems and the depot, or CDMO. When a shipment is being raised within the IRT system, the depot or CDMO can see that in their system, and then they can use a scanning gun to marry off the like of the kit and shipment ID. This can be almost fully automated, thereby reducing potential human error.”

Once the passive temperature logger is packed, it is sent to a clinical trial site, from which point the site has to complete an incoming goods inspection once the relevant parcel arrives.

Stolle goes on to highlight that a significant pain point within the clinical supply chain is the site not returning or uploading the data of the passive logger into the relevant system, in the way they are supposed to. According to Stolle, these upload rates can be as low as <50%. Within its IRT system, Sensitech has put a protocol in place to address this issue.

“With the incoming goods inspection at the clinical trial site performed within the IRT system with our IRT partners, a protocol makes it so that sites cannot complete the incoming goods inspection without actually plugging in the logger to a laptop and uploading the temperature data within the logger,” Stolle says.

“This, obviously, is a very potent way of forcing the sites to upload the temperature data, meaning upload rates get a lot higher with this system in place,” Stolle adds.

Proactive supply chain management with agentic AI

Marken’s Gunter Van Hoof speaking at CTS Europe. Credit: Arena International Events Group / Athanasios Psimadis

Gunter Van Hoof, vice president of global clinical trial distribution at Marken, notes that while predictive analytics and forecasting currently have a place in clinical supply chain oversight, they are “not sustainable in the long term”.

During a presentation on CTS’s mainstage on day two of the conference, Van Hoof explains that the rationale for clinical supply chain oversight is moving from a sentiment of “how can we react faster?” to one of “how can we be proactive?”

In Van Hoof’s view, this shift in mindset will be achieved with agentic artificial intelligence (agentic AI) – a form of AI that can independently plan and make decisions with minimal human supervision.

“Using agentic AI will mean having all the supply chain data available, which means continuously monitoring the supply chain itself and predicting recommended actions across every shipment,” Van Hoof says.

“This will mean that teams can act faster and act in areas where it is most needed. The result will be fewer delays in our industry, with greater predictability, proactive exception management, and real-time tracking, so the expected delivery time will always be known,” Van Hoof continues.

For all of this to work, Van Hoof concludes that every datapoint, such as that originating from Internet of Things (IoT) devices, airline updates, email exchanges, temperature controls, locational data and more, will need to be fed into agentic AI-powered dashboards, all with a view to shifting the approach to supply chain management to one that is “predictive rather than reactive”.

Van Hoof continues: “We need to stop thinking about how we can react faster, but how we can prevent issues from occurring. This will be achieved by moving away from fragmented supply chains to ones that are connected, with all of the data flowing together.”

“Under this setup, all systems will communicate with one another, reflecting a move away from tracking everything manually to a digitally orchestrated supply chain that is fit for the future,” he concludes.

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