Bengaluru start-up aims to solve cold chain logistics for healthcare

A Bengaluru-based company has developed a portable battery-powered cooling device that can carry medical supplies to hinterlands with limited electricity access 

In a mostly tropical country like India where regions experience high temperatures during the daytime, the lack of reliable last-mile cold chain has been a major challenge in healthcare. An effective mechanism to transport temperature-sensitive to remote rural settlements, or diagnostic samples from villages to the nearest urban centres is a crucial requirement not only in India, but across the world in developing countries. 

Bengaluru-based start-up Enhance Innovations may have a solution for this. The company has developed Phloton, a portable battery-powered cooling device that can carry medical supplies to hinterlands with limited electricity access. 

Ineffective last mile solutions

“For a country like India where diabetes is so common, there are places you can’t safely store or carry insulin to because there’s not enough refrigeration available,” says Ankita Mittal, CEO at Enhance Innovations, underlining the gravity of the situation. 

According to WHO estimates, 50% of vaccines are wasted globally every year. A major reason is lack of temperature control and ineffective cold chain logistics. 

“Till the point of public health centres (PHC) it’s fine. We have big refrigerators or freezers to keep these vaccines safe. But from the PHC to the point of administration, especially in rural settings, it becomes a challenge,” points out Mittal. 

“Everybody in an entire block cannot come to the PHC. ASHA workers carry medications and vaccines to administer to people, but how do we make sure they can carry it safe?” 

In most places, the existing mechanism is to carry the vaccines in iceboxes. However, within the first hour of being taken out of the refrigerator, these boxes lose 50% of their cooling. In India, places that are several hours away from the nearest PHC are not rare. This means that by the time the vaccine reaches such places and is administered to people, there is a possibility of iceboxes becoming warmer rendering the vaccines ineffective.  

Effort to augment healthcare

 The severity of the situation further hit Mittal and her brother Prerit Mittal when the COVID-19 pandemic struck the world. 

“When the pandemic happened, we realised that this is something which can hit us anytime. The global healthcare system was shaken up. In India, COVID was urban-centric. Tomorrow if an outbreak which does not differentiate between urban and rural population happens, what do you do? How do you safely carry a vaccine to everyone? We wondered what can be done to plug such gaps,” says Mittal. 

The team thus started working with scientists at the National Physical Laboratory of India to develop an effective coldchain solution that can augment the existing healthcare system. The result was Phloton. 

Phloton

A portable device, Phloton has a 2-litre chamber than can keep upto 20 vials of vaccines at 4-6 degree celsius. According to the founders, the device can maintain the temperature for around 10 hours and offers live temperature monitoring.  

“To cover for any challenges midway, we have integrated a solar panel to it. In locations with higher temperature, the battery can drain faster. So if there’s a challenge midway, you can plug in the solar panel, charge the device and carry it further forward,” Mittal explains. 

According to her, three hours of sunlight can charge the battery fully.  

Technology 

The technology used to develop the device is in fact not new. Phloton uses an active cooling methodology based on the thermoelectric effect.  

“It’s called piezoelectric devices,” Mittal explains. These devices are by now used in everyday devices such as phones, smart watches and laptops. “It creates a thermal deficit, takes away the heat to cool the device down and dissipates that heat. It works very well for small devices,” she notes. “The patent for the piezoelectric module has expired. What is patentable for us is its application – the design or the circuitry we put around it to make Phloton.”  

Exploring more markets 

The company which currently waits for CDSCO approval and plans to later apply for WHO sanctions foresees a big market which is not limited to healthcare.  

Given the government’s mandate to ensure that everyone is vaccinated, they hope that the biggest customer would be public healthcare programmes. Private hospitals may also require the device when they have to transport high-value medication such as oncology drugs, they point out.  

“Diagnostic chains is another market. Using such devices can increase the reliability of their results,” Mittal notes.  

“Biomedical research, organ transport, F&B, animal husbandry, agriculture, cosmetics...the scope is vast,” she adds. 

Finding new business stracks 

However, since the device is pending approvals, the team notes that they are not going to the market aggressively for human vaccines although they claim to have working orders.  

In the meantime, they have been working with animal husbandry organisations such as Akshayakalpa, URMUL in Rajasthan and a dairy collective in Uttar Pradesh.  

At Akshayakalpa and URMUL, the device was tested out to address bovine and camel vaccine spoilage respectively. 

“These organisations have been testing out our devices for bovine vaccines and artificial insemination samples. The results have been great so far,” Mittal notes.  

“While the drive to venture into this was human healthcare, when we started field trials, we realised it has so many different applications. Animal husbandry is currently looking like a good parallel business track. There have been no adverse events from the field so far.”  

From India for the world 

While the device has been designed as a scalable, modular, easy-to-carry solution, some design tweaks are currently being made for large scale manufacturing as the team is looking to scale up production with a good number of working orders coming in.  

So far supported by grants from USAID, Social Alpha, BIRAC and a few incubators, they are now planning to active fundraise from venture capital firms.  

“By the middle of next year, we would like to explore geographies outside India. In parallel we also aim to do more product development based on the same technology. Challenges in terms of geographies, accessibility, and disconnected populations exist across the world. The device is designed keeping India in mind, but it is designed for the challenges of the developing world.” 

Published - September 30, 2024 09:00 am IST