Welcome to MaxQ&A – designed to bring you insights from experts about what’s happening in the life sciences and blood industry. We plan to feature our internal specialists and external partners to examine challenges, trends and opportunities.
We’re launching the series with a conversation with MaxQ co-founder and CEO Saravan Kumar. While working toward his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering at Oklahoma State University, Saravan and MaxQ co-founders were also busy developing a new insulation material concept for the aerospace industry. Read on to learn more about how he got from Biomedical Engineering and the aerospace industry to helping blood centers and hospitals protect their valuable blood products.
Q. Can you tell us a bit about where the MaxQ journey began?
While I was in grad school, my co-founders and I began developing a new insulation material that was rigid and – to our minds – had high-insulating properties that would make it perfect for application in the aerospace industry. We wrote an initial proposal to NASA looking for funding but quickly discovered the market size would probably not sustain a successful and growing business. During that process in 2013, one of the people who reviewed our proposal suggested we look into life sciences, and that single comment changed the fate of MaxQ.
Q. What led you to focus on the blood supply chain specifically?
I was a research assistant in my Ph.D. program, writing my dissertation – “Effect of dynamic shear stress on endothelial cells, platelets and their interactions.” Since I was examining blood fluid dynamics in different conditions, I was getting whole blood units regularly for my research. It would always show up in a cardboard or foam box with a bag of ice on top of it. Once every couple of weeks there would be no ice – just a unit of blood sitting in a box. I would measure the temperature and had to discard the blood if it was out of range.
I remember thinking at the time, that’s just unacceptable. Somebody took the time to donate a unit of blood with the intent of saving someone’s life, and I was just tossing it in the trash can. Applying the MaxQ insulation technology to blood products just made sense.
Q. How did you go about gaining a better understanding of the blood supply chain?
We decided we needed to talk to blood centers and hospital blood banks to find out how they moved blood product. We starting right in our backyard with the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. They were using three of four different types and colors of coolers for various protocols. For instance, they had a pediatric cooler and an operating room cooler, and so on. Then in 2014, the year after we pivoted to life science packaging, we attended the AABB’s (American Associated of Blood Banks) Annual Meeting.
Q. What did you learn from your conversations?
In talking to blood centers, we found that there was no standardization. Because processes were built around using Igloo coolers that you can get anywhere and were never designed for dispensing blood, every blood bank had its own way of doing things. That includes how much ice, how many gel packs, and even where those should be placed in relation to the blood bag.
It was our understanding that this lack of standardization led to blood waste of about 5% industry-wide.
Q. What was being done to try to bring waste down?
Blood centers were focused primarily on chemical indicators and data logging devices for monitoring temperature to try to being waste down. No one really ever considered that improving the cooler technology could have just as great an impact. Even when we went to AABB, we found that packaging solutions were just cardboard and foam, as I experienced as a research assistant. The lack of innovation to improve blood storage and transport, and support blood bank operations, was astounding to us.
That’s when we started to see all the work we’d done up until that point could help us develop an innovative, purpose-built cooler system that would add a lot of value to the blood supply chain.
Q. Where did you start?
The material concept we’d already developed was for the aerospace industry and very expensive. We needed to bring the costs down significantly, so we began looking for funding. The National Science Foundation like the problem we were trying to solve and began funding us in 2014. By early 2017, we launched our MaxPlus Blood Coolers for use in operating rooms.
Q. Was there a specific problem you were solving with your first launch?
When we began talking to hospitals and blood banks, we found that surgeries were getting longer. At that time, the benchmark was to use a four- or six-hour cooler with ice to hold blood products. Blood bank protocols require validation every four hours, which meant if surgery was longer than that – a tech had to go to the OR and change the blood out. The biggest issue ORs were facing was when a tech forgot it meant as many as four to six units of blood products had to be discarded. We set the validation time for MaxPlus at 24 hours because we wanted it to be dramatically better.
As we began rolling these out in hospitals around the country, we stumbled across another challenge hospitals had with massive transfusion. Massive transfusion protocol typically requires six units of red blood cells, six units of plasma, and one platelet every 15 minutes. What we were seeing were techs running through the hospital carrying three separate coolers each time. That’s when we got to work developing our MaxPlus MTP Cooler® system, which launched in 2019 and can hold all three blood products at their precise temperature in a single cooler.
Q. What has the industry response been so far?
We’ve shipped close to 2,000 coolers to about 800 hospital across the United States so far. We’ve also sent out nearly 3,000 boxes for transporting products in the first mile of the blood supply chain. That equates to 10,000 to 20,000 units of blood being moved everyday using our MaxPlus products.
Our customers trust us. They see us more as subject matter experts developing new ways to preserve the blood supply. They know they can bring us a challenge, and we’ll do what we can to help them solve it. In fact, our products and approach let us to win the DHL Life Science Innovation Challenge in 2020.
Q. What’s next for the industry in general and MaxQ in particular?
It’s getting increasingly difficult to hire techs for blood banks. There’s been a lot of turnover, which is why standardization is so critical – so everyone, no matter how seasoned they are or what blood center they are working in, will easily be able to be trained and follow the process. That’s a big part of what we’re trying to do by creating turnkey systems designed and validated to comply with the guidelines for each different blood product. This is just the opposite of what blood banks have historically had to do – develop their own unique packing techniques and validation protocols to “fit” the various coolers and blood product types. We also think more regulation will be upcoming around monitoring blood products as they move through the supply chain. That’s chain of custody and chain of identity, as well as chain of condition. We’ve seen this trend in pharma, and I believe it will move into the blood bank industry as well. This is especially true considering the inventory shortage that’s making blood product all that much more valuable. As a result, visibility will be essential. Many blood banks are already using temperature monitoring and data logging devices, some in the more traditional packouts and others with our coolers, but those are all disparate components. That’s why MaxQ is working on developing integrated monitoring systems, providing a much more turnkey solution for blood banks. These coolers will have temperature and GPS built-in, which will record and store data in a centralized location so everybody in the blood supply chain can make informed, data-driven decisions.
Learn more about MaxQ’s early days as a start up in this feature article by The Oklahoman, May 2015
Patty Fawkes, Section Chief, Kaweah Delta Medical Centers
“I fell in love with the MaxQ boxes at AABB. They’re affordable, sturdy and easy to clean. Plus, the company is always making improvements on them. With an average of 45 traumas a month, we use three different products and could not be happier with them.”
Marvin Jones MLT, BSc (MLS) Charge Technologist Transfusion Medicine Dept., Health Sciences North
“We use MaxQ coolers during massive hemorrhage events and to provide uncrossmatched blood to floors. By enabling us to maintain temperatures for extended time periods, they’ve helped us reduce blood product wastage.”
About MaxQ: Trusted by over 750 healthcare systems, blood centers, Grifols, Blood Centers of America and clinical trial teams across the globe, MaxQ’s mission is to help our clients protect the safety of patients. Our packaging systems meet strict requirements to help make sure your product is protected, maintaining the quality of temperature-sensitive products. The result is a safer product with almost zero risk of product loss, thereby leading to a cost and performance-optimized supply chain. We are the most comprehensive solution provider for blood and blood based biologics packaging and transport covering every leg of the supply chain.
For questions, please contact Saravan Kumar, CEO, at saravank@flymaxq.com.
