Q&A: How Phononic is Revolutionizing Heating and Cooling for Pharmaceuticals

When it comes to the rising heat of the summer months, combined with the increasingly apparent effects of global warming, the task of properly cooling or heating medications and other pharmaceutical products is no small task. From over- and under-counter pharmacy storage to keeping prescriptions at precise temperatures during delivery, one company is revolutionizing this space with its solid state cooling technology.

In an exclusive interview with Drug Topics, Dana Krug, Senior Vice President of Cold Chain Fulfillment at Phononic, discussed how his company is changing the way pharmacies and drug manufacturers store and delivery their products, leading to a healthier patient population while simultaneously maximizing profits.

Krug discussed the role his company’s solid state cooling technology plays in the pharmaceutical industry. | image credit: Darwin Brandis / stock.adobe.com

Drug Topics: Can you give us a little overview of Phononic and how your company is revolutionizing cooling and heating in the modern world?

Dana Krug: The core of Phononic is really centered around thermoelectric technology. We've taken thermoelectrics that have been around for over 100 years and taken all of the negatives away, and improved on them, and then enhanced on the positives. We’ve used that thermoelectric cooling capability, or solid state cooling as we like to refer to it, in order to make cooling in refrigeration more rugged. The way our technology works, you're only putting a current through different types of metals, so your amount of moving or mechanical parts within a cooling system are reduced greatly. The only thing in our refrigeration systems that actually moves, or that is mechanical, are just fans to be able to circulate the air. Unlike a compressor-type system, where you're compressing gasses and it's an interactive system, our cooling system is really built around a complete closed-loop system that doesn't leak like a compressor-based system would leak. It doesn't have the moving components like a compressor-based system would have and then the size of our system is considerably smaller than what you would see in a compressor-based system.

Our technology is actually used in several different areas. Health and life sciences is one area…but we're also in LIDAR cooling systems because there's a lot of data and you're having to keep things at a very constant temperature, a very precise temperature. Those devices are more like the size of my fingernail, so very micro-cooling. We also use them in data centers to cool fiber optics in lasers, so you need the laser to shoot extremely perfect. When you're doing that, you want to make sure that the heat and the cold, that you're regulating the temperature to get the best performance. In life science and in health care, we're actually doing that in under-counter and above-counter refrigeration, as well as totes, that's more fulfillment-based. There's a lot of reasons why our technology fit really well for the life science area because of some of the performance metrics that we can hit.

READ MORE: Does Your Vaccine Storage System Protect Patients and Your Business?

Drug Topics: Can you talk about what type of role Phononic plays, or is trying to play, within the pharmaceutical industry?

Dana Krug: There's 2 areas within the pharmaceutical industry that we play in, using the same technology in really 2 different types of applications. Think about the first application being more the under-counter refrigeration and above counter-refrigeration. [It’s] important to understand because this will go through when we start talking about the fulfillment side as well. The way that our cooling system works is it's very, very precise, meaning our temperature, high to low, is within a half a degree. We actually keep all of the contents within that cube, if you will, within a half a degree. We also have the ability to utilize the entire space inside of that cube. So think about whether it's a tote that's mobile, or whether it's an under-counter refrigeration system. If it was compressor-based, just like you've seen with your refrigerator at home, you put lettuce in there, you go to get the lettuce, and it's frozen sometimes, and then sometimes it's not. Depending on where you put it in the refrigerator, it might come out frozen or not. The way our technology works is we cool to the exact temperature that you need. If you say you want 38 degrees, we’re 38 and a half, 37 and a half. We don't have these big dips that you would see with refrigeration on compressors. Compressors are what I would call “brute force,” and there's a there's a reason for it. But they'll actually bring your temperatures below freezing in a refrigerator and then let them warm up, so you might have a 10-degree swing inside of your refrigerator. And the reason why you have things that freeze in the refrigerator is because they actually bring it below the freezing level.

When you think about life sciences, what they've done in a lot of cases, they actually bring all of the vaccines, the vials, the medication, to the center of the refrigerator, because they don't want it on the exterior walls or any areas where it might freeze or go below. With our technology in the life science area, we actually have the ability to give them the ability to put it in the entire space inside of that refrigeration system. So you might get 40%-50% more capacity inside of the same space, which brings down your drug cost too because it's a kind of a total cost of ownership. When you're looking at transport, or moving it within, whether that might be a micro-fulfillment center where there actually fulfilling the orders for the prescriptions, the movement of the product that needs to be cold can be done inside our totes that allow them to keep the temperature, again, within a half a degree. That doesn't matter if it's something where it's like a GLP-1-type drug, which is exploding right now, and we're seeing our customers actually double their need for cold chain because of that. Although, GLP-1-type prescriptions don't need to be held within a half degree, they do need to be kept within their own specifications in the cold chain.

We're able to actually use the totes to transport, not just when they first fill the order, but as they stage it in different areas within the warehouse…They're actually able to maintain that cold chain at the exact temperatures. On top of that, they're also able to monitor with our totes. We actually monitor about 50 points of information that's coming off the totes, but most critical is obviously the temperature and to make sure there's no temperature excursions when they're flowing the tote through their fulfillment process.

What we see in the pharmaceutical and health and life science space is really 2 applications, but the one that's really taking off right now is more on the fulfillment side, which I think is one of the bigger areas when you start losing cold chain. When you get out of the actual fulfillment in the factory, once it's done there, even in different areas of the fulfillment center, you start to lose cold chain. And certainly, on the delivery side, you definitely lose cold chain, versus what they're doing today, [which] typically is passive cooling. What we've seen with some customers is, even in their warehouse, they'll use ice packs or dry ice in the warehouse. They'll interleave cardboard, dry ice, cardboard, the product [or] vaccine…more cardboard. The reason why they're doing the cardboard is to protect the vaccine from touching the dry ice. So, if you can imagine, it's not exactly an exact science, depending on if it slides to one side and touches it. It’s not just about heat that will deteriorate a vaccine or a medication, it's also cold: you can't allow it to freeze. What they're seeing with our totes is the ability to actually fill that tote up in the warehouse, know that it's going to stay at the exact temperature that they want to, and not kind of go through this interleaving of cardboards and passive cooling to be able to get there. It's just very, very clean for them, and easier to monitor and certainly the quality is much higher for their customer.

Stay tuned for part II of our Q&A series with Dana Krug of Phononic to see a full scope of how their technology is causing disruption in the heating and cooling industry.

READ MORE: Q&A: As Scope of Practice Expands, Technology Must Catch Up

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