by RAIN Training
RAIN technology is undergoing a significant evolution, extending far beyond its traditional role in inventory management and asset tracking. The focus is shifting to create real-time actionable data at an item level, bringing significant business benefits to the pharmaceutical manufacturers and Hospital pharmacies.
A key part of this evolution is the integration of Battery Free RAIN Sensor Tags, which can be embedded directly within pharmaceutical packaging, transforming passive containers into smart and connected items capable of sensing, communicating, and generating data. This addresses the critical challenge of monitoring environmental parameters like temperature and humidity directly from inside the packaging. Both factors affect medication stability, efficiency, and safety. By enabling continuous, accurate, and non-invasive monitoring directly inside pharmaceutical packaging, RAIN Sensor Tags unlock unprecedented visibility during drug development, manufacturing, and distribution. These battery-free, item-level sensors provide pharma companies with decision-grade environmental data that directly impact drug stability and safety.
In the hospital setting, RAIN is also transforming how medications are managed, enabling real-time tracking, automated inventory control, and smarter restocking workflows. This translates into fewer stockouts, reduced waste from expired drugs, and more time for clinical staff to focus on patient care.
As an example,
Late Stage Development (Stability Testing): RAIN Sensor Tags can be embedded in packages placed in climatic chambers to monitor the actual temperature and humidity experienced by the product over full test cycles. This helps in understanding how new drugs are impacted by the environment.
Late Stage Development (Packaging Selection): By inserting sensors directly inside packages, different packaging materials can be monitored in real conditions. This enables faster, data-driven selection of packaging materials by directly comparing how different options perform, based on real-time insights into their ability to protect the drug’s integrity. As a result, the design and validation of new, including sustainable, packaging formats can be significantly accelerated.
Manufacturing Phase (Process Analytical Technology – PAT): Sensors inside containers can act as “distributed sentinels” during production. This brings a unique perspective directly from the product, enabling granular control of critical transitions and providing decision-grade data for internal monitoring and risk assessment.
Post Production Monitoring.
While a shipment of medication may be subjected to adverse conditions during transit or storage, not all units may be equally affected. In-package RAIN Sensor Tags offer a unique capability: they allow pharmaceutical companies to reproduce the exact environmental conditions experienced in the field — such as temperature spikes or humidity excursions — directly within laboratory stability chambers.
By embedding the sensors inside the drug packaging, it’s possible to monitor in real time how those external stressors impact the internal microenvironment of the product. This helps determine whether the integrity of the drug may have been compromised. The result is a data-driven assessment that supports more accurate complaint investigations, better cold chain validation, and smarter quality decisions.
Hospital Pharmacy Optimisation: Medications have a shelf life, sometimes quite a short one. Often, they need to be mixed to create the final usable format, and are extremely expensive. RAIN Tags are helping Pharmacies to have the right drugs available at the right time and to reduce waste and eliminate many of the manual process that currently exists
To see a deeper dive into this revolutionary application of RAIN technology in the pharmaceutical sector, take a look at what our members are achieving in the videos below.
Radio6ense: Pioneering Rain-Enabled smart packaging in healthcare
Bluesight: Driving Pharmacy Optimization in Hospitals