Medical transport: what it is and why time, temperature and proof matter

Medical transport concerns four kinds of shipment. Laboratory specimens: blood, urine, tissue, swabs and cultures, from collection point, practice or ward to the laboratory. Medicines: from hospital pharmacy, compounding pharmacy or wholesaler to ward, branch or institution. Medical documents and data carriers. And medical devices and materials, from sterile instruments to test kits; these do not fall under the GDP guidelines but under the European regulations on medical devices and in-vitro diagnostics.

The clients are hospitals, laboratories, pharmacies, out-of-hours GP services and wholesalers. What they have in common: a quality department or a responsible person who wants to be able to see afterwards what happened to a shipment. What a medical courier does for that is explained in what is a medical courier; how specimens move through the chain in laboratory transport.

Time, because an analysis or a treatment is waiting for the shipment and a specimen does not remain usable indefinitely; the laboratory decides, per test, how long and under which condition. Temperature, because many medicines only remain usable within the storage condition on their pack and the GDP guidelines require transport to stay within those limits; which limits those are follows from the product, not from a general table. Proof, because the recipient must be able to trace who delivered what, when, to whom, and at which temperature.

The three belong together. A ride that arrives on time but whose temperature nobody knows is, for a quality department, a ride with a question mark. That is why medical transport comes with a file per ride: actual pickup and delivery time, the name and role of the person signing, and the measured temperature where the condition calls for it.

There is no separate law for medical transport; a different framework applies per type of shipment. Specimens that may contain pathogens fall under the ADR, which in the Netherlands also applies to domestic transport through the national act and regulation on dangerous goods; the sender classifies and packs, the carrier checks. Medicines fall under the GDP guidelines, which are addressed to the wholesaler and reach the carrier through that wholesaler's contract and audits; a carrier that only transports needs no wholesale distribution authorisation but does have to comply with the GDP rules. Personal data that travel with a ride fall under the GDPR. And for loss, damage or delay, the carriage law in Book 8 of the Dutch Civil Code applies, with a statutory liability limit per kilogram.

Each of these frameworks has its own part in this knowledge base: transporting medical specimens, GDP and transport and temperature-controlled transport.

Medical transport is the umbrella term for all of this transport, planned or unplanned. Urgent medical transport is the part in which time weighs heaviest: one shipment, straight from pickup to delivery address, because a result or a treatment is waiting for it. This knowledge base explains the rules and the chain; anyone who needs transport right now will find it under urgent medical transport in the Netherlands and the six kinds of transport UrgentX provides.