Ensuring product quality is of utmost importance to the pharmaceutical industry, and appropriate controls and oversight are required for both the drug-manufacturing process and the supply chain for pharmaceutical ingredients.

Eight p.m. in the "war room" of Johnson & Johnson Health Care Systems: 150 people from all over the world are on a conference call. The topic is a supply outage of trocars, a medical device used in microscopic surgery. Someone on the line, clearly untroubled by the crisis, speaks up. "It's just a trocar," he says.

CEVA Logistics has opened a new hub for healthcare distribution, dubbed City of Pharma, in Italy.

Logistics giant DHL has a new range of temperature-controlled packaging as part of its DHL Medical Express services in Singapore. The latest service offering completes the series of Thermo Packaging, which is now available to life sciences and healthcare clients here.

Analyst Insight: Highly regulated industries"”such as pharmaceuticals, aerospace, food, and chemicals"”typically implement traceability and serialization capabilities to meet regulatory requirements, quality, and recall purposes. These same capabilities can be useful in reducing theft within the supply chain. But it takes more than just technology. It requires a community that can share that information effectively and collaborate with law enforcement at national, state and local levels. -- Bill McBeath, Chief Research Officer, ChainLink Research