Up to 37 percent of temperature-sensitive vaccines are lost on the final stretch of the cold chain in low and middle income countries. Not in the warehouse, not in transit, but on the last kilometers to the patient.

IKIC Impact Ventures licensed a passive cooling technology from Colruyt Group, and set out to adapt it for healthcare logistics. Superellipse took on the design and engineering. The first result was a cooler box for transport from warehouse to clinic. Then came the harder problem: the nurse on a motorbike, going to a village with no roads.

Our designers and engineers rethought the form factor into a backpack. Weight distribution, one-handed opening, a simple display showing remaining cooling time. Modular thermostatic batteries scale the cold chain from 48 hours to two weeks depending on the mission. Prototypes were tested in our in-house climate chamber, then validated in the field in Benin.