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'Cold Chain Chronicles' delivers thought-provoking insights

New book authored by Kevin O’Donnell provides practitioner’s outside-the-box perspectives on the importance of temperature-sensitive drug stewardship.

Available to ship in early Sept. 2014, Kevin O’Donnell’s 182-page hardcover book may be ordered on the Parenteral Drug Assn.’s website.

“This book is quite different from the typical prescriptive PDA/DHI ‘how-to’ publication,” says promotional literature about the book. “Noted pharmaceutical cold-chain expert Kevin O’Donnell relates a series of engaging stories carefully crafted to elevate awareness, understanding, and criticality of temperature-sensitive drug products throughout the supply chain—not only for the stakeholders involved—but for the consumer in us all.

“O’Donnell deftly blends his cold-chain storytelling with charm and wit, history and science, and the wisdom of a practitioner’s 35 years’ experience. These thought-provoking narratives convey to the reader heuristic lessons that underscore the risks involved and the impending need to improve the processes that ensure these fragile pharmaceutical products arrive to their destinations—and to the patients who need them—in a safe, controlled way.”

O’Donnell is the Senior Partner with Exelsius, an international cold chain management consultancy providing independent research, consulting, and education services to manufacturers, airlines, forwarders, and other service providers in the life science logistics industry.

An engineer, author, and educator, O’Donnell has devoted more than 30 years of his career on transport packaging, logistics, and distribution in the pharmaceutical industry. His experience includes serving as Director and Technical Advisor to Industry at Tegrant Corp., ThermoSafeBrands, and as Principle Packaging Engineer at Abbott Laboratories Global Pharmaceutical Division, where his 26-year career included more than 20 years within temperature assurance packaging. His ClutchCargo.us blog promotes good practices for temperature-sensitive healthcare products.

O’Donnell is considered one of the principal architects of the modern-day biopharmaceutical cold-chain movement and a champion for the advancement of good distribution and logistics practices for temperature-sensitive drugs. His pioneering efforts are reflected in his various roles within the industry and for his co-authorship of numerous standards and guidance documents including that as a member of the U.S. Pharmacopeia (USP) Expert Committee on Packaging, Storage and Distribution; temporary advisor and certified mentor to the World Health Organization (WHO); as founding member of the PDA Pharmaceutical Cold-Chain Interest Group, and co-author of PDA Technical Report No. 39.