Cold chains for food and medicine
42 recent papers study cold chains and pharmaceutical or vaccine supply chains, 32 of them in operations research journals, and only a handful use AI. Refrigeration costs energy and a broken chain costs the product. Where in the chain is temperature lost, and is monitoring worth more than insulation?
What prompted this#
Since October 2025, 42 papers carry a cold-chain, pharmaceutical-supply-chain or vaccine-supply-chain keyword, as many as in the year before and up from 27 two years earlier: "pharmaceutical supply chain" on 18, "cold chain" on 17, "vaccine supply chain" on 6. Thirty-two appeared in operations research journals. Over three years the keywords most often next to them are supply chain resilience (18), CO2 emissions (13), blockchain (13), multi-objective optimization (13) and perishable goods (9); drug shortages appear on 6. Only 6 of the 111 papers carry an AI or machine-learning keyword. A related note asks how retailers manage food that expires; this one follows the temperature-controlled chain behind it, for food and for medicine.
Questions#
- Where is temperature control lost most often: at cross-docking, at customs, in the last mile?
- Refrigeration emits and spoilage wastes: at what carbon price does the trade-off in multi-objective models change the chosen design?
- Do sensor data and blockchain traceability prevent temperature excursions or only document them, and who pays for a spoiled shipment?
- Does scarce cold-chain capacity make drug shortages more likely for temperature-sensitive medicines?
Data that could help#
Published temperature-logger datasets from shipping studies, WHO and UNICEF reports on vaccine wastage, the FDA drug shortage database and USDA cold storage statistics.
Next step#
Build a two-stage model of a pharmaceutical cold chain with excursion probabilities taken from published logger data, and compare the value of real-time monitoring with that of better insulation.