Objectives of the service
Xcit'ID is the follow-up of the "Gulliver" ARTES 20 Feasibility Study, whose final presentation was held in ESTEC in July 2012. Gulliver pre-validated the technical and commercial feasibility of the proposed solution, and forged consolidated partnerships with the following important stakeholders:
- SANOFI-AVENTIS, multinational pharmaceutical company (Hungary)
- SVD, international logistics (France)
- AXA, insurance (France)
- UNICEF, humanitarian ONG for children
Xcit'ID is aimed at deploying three operational pilots to be tested by these partners in the field.
Up to 25% of pharmaceutical products must be kept within a narrow temperature range to remain safe and effective, putting strong constraints on the supply chain.
Pharmaceutical cold chains from producer to end user are highly complex and build on extensive networks of transporters, warehouses, importers/exporters, pharmacies, etc... Lack of coordination between parties is often the reason for cold chain losses (i.e. goods either physically lost or temperature constraints not enforced) making inventory optimization very difficult. As such, the availability of goods to the end-users can only be ensured with expensive oversupply.
It has to be remarked that the value of 
the goods of one single shipment can easily exceed 1Million USD. Therefore, even a small reduction of losses saves a considerable amount of money.
Present solutions consist of simple temperature sensor-loggers that just provide the container's trip temperature historic to verify whether the cold chain has been intact during transportation, showing the final recipient if the products are in good condition. In this way, temperature failures are only known at the end of the chain, when tags are unpacked from goods, and it is therefore too late to react. In underdeveloped regions, the lack of reliable infrastructure challenges any monitoring systems.
The main goal of Xcit'ID is to fill in the gap with a new product providing near-real-time monitoring of temperature, geo-position and timing, of uniquely identified goods travelling along world-wide cold chains, independently from local infrastructure.
Users and their needs
The following typologies of users are target, mostly active worldwide:
- Multinational pharmaceutical companies
- International logistics companies
- Insurance companies
- Humanitarian ONG (Aid & Development community)
Service/ system concept
Present solutions consist of simple temperature sensor-loggers that just provide the container's trip temperature historic to verify whether the cold chain has been intact during transportation, showing only to the final recipient if the products are in good condition. If they are not, it is too late to react effectively.
The main goal of Xcit'ID is to fill in the gap with a new product providing near-real-time monitoring of temperature, geo-position and timing, of uniquely identified goods travelling along world-wide cold chains, independently from local infrastructure.
Space Added Value
XcitID targets shipments worldwide, often where there is a lack of terrestrial communication means. Not to mention the need of near-real-time geo-positioning of the goods.
Current Status
The Final Review has been successfully held via telco on 05 Mar 2015.
The Pilot stages of the XcitID project have been completed with excellent results and feedback from all the involved users. Specifically:
a. 7 shipments of high-value pharmaceutical goods have been carried out from SANOFI (Hungary) to Russia (Moscow), to Ucrania, to Belorussia, to Kazahstan, to Azerbaijan and to Georgia. SANOFI has expressed its interest to negotiate with Novacom a subscription to the XcitID service
b. Medicine Sans Frontiere (Chad) has carried out 2 shipments of vaccines from Ndjamena to Moissala and has also successfully used the fixed terminal version of the XcitID platform at their warehouse
c. UNICEF (Chad) has used successfully the fixed terminal version of the XcitID platform at their warehouse in Ndjamena
b. Medicine Sans Frontiere (Chad) and UNICEF
(Chad) have also provided their interest for a future commercial subscription to the XcitID services, but have expressed additional needs that Novacom is going to address via an add-on Activity (see next lines about the CCN).
