IoT-Enabled Medication Safety: AntTail's Partnership with Mendix and AWS

AntTail is a Netherlands-based expert in IoT services for the cold-chain logistics of medical supplies. For a decade, they have been delivering innovative products and services to keep medicine safe. They have built a reputation for providing accurate and reliable products and services for every facet of the pharmaceutical supply chain – from manufacturing, transit, and warehousing providers to patients at home. They have a portfolio of applications supporting safe medication handling and monitoring at the warehouse, pharmacy, and individual patient levels. They have also developed a consumer-friendly box system for in-home monitoring and patient reminders.

Ensuring the quality and safety of medication is a complex task due to the intricate lifecycle of pharmaceutical products. From production to warehouse to patient, each stage requires careful handling to maintain the potency of the medication. This is a global challenge, with over 275 million people using prescription drugs worldwide. AntTail, a Netherlands-based IoT services provider for the cold-chain logistics of medical supplies, has been working to address this issue. However, they faced challenges in building custom applications for medicine-related logistics quickly and efficiently. They also needed to ensure data availability, security, and scalability for their applications. Furthermore, they had to deal with the complexities of monitoring conditions of medications in patients’ home refrigerators, maintaining stringent standards in warehouses, and dealing with the traditional method of monitoring with wired sensors, which was costly and required frequent maintenance.

AntTail leveraged Mendix to build custom applications for medicine-related logistics swiftly and AWS to enhance data availability for their Mendix applications while boosting security and scalability. They incorporated AWS services in their infrastructure, including Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) for their vast data storage needs, Amazon Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) to optimize functionality as data transaction volume increases, and Amazon servers to access an unlimited version of Plotly to visualize data points. AntTail implemented one architecture for all its portals, apps, and client-facing endpoints to ensure long-term scalability. They also combined AWS Database with sensor memory to assure clients that there will be no unaccountable lapses in data. AntTail developed a consumer-friendly box system that fits in home refrigerators and continuously monitors temperature and light to tabulate when patients take their medication and notify them of any disruptions. They also provided solutions for warehouses, reducing the total cost of ownership around monitoring and reducing manual work involved in setup and maintenance.

• AntTail's IoT-enabled solutions have significantly improved the accuracy and transparency across the pharmaceutical supply chain. Their multi-tenant solutions support both initial temperature mapping and help pharmacy and warehouse clients maintain compliant temperature logs over time. The use of wireless sensors has eliminated the need for costly and time-consuming rewiring in warehouses. The consumer-friendly box system developed by AntTail has enhanced consumer safety, solved medical transit logistics challenges, and helped prevent counterfeit medicine production. The partnership with Mendix and AWS has allowed AntTail to create an IoT ecosystem that is redefining the pharmaceutical logistics industry, with visible implications in B2B and B2C supply chains, global pandemic response, and other applications such as warehousing medications and ensuring safety and authenticity in international areas of need.

• AntTail's sensors run for 8 years without any maintenance or need for recalibration.
• It takes about 3-4 minutes to create a new heat map for a warehouse.
• AntTail managed the logistics of all COVID-19 vaccinations for the country of Uruguay, totaling more than 10 million vaccinations.