Enabling Safe and Sustainable Medical Deliveries by Connected Autonomous Freight Vehicles Operating within Dangerous Goods Regulations

Health service providers in developed nations are responsible for 5% of their national carbon emissions, much of which originate from transport and supply chains. Connected autonomous freight vehicles (CAV-Fs) offer the potential to reduce this impact and enable lower cost operations, with trials being explored across the world. Transportation and carriage regulations, particularly in relation to the movement of dangerous goods (DG) such as medicines and diagnostic specimens, have not been developed for and applied to this new transport mode, particularly where loads are unaccompanied. Through an audit of current legislation and practice, this paper evaluates current DGs regulations applied to the transportation of medical products and medicines by autonomous road vehicles. Where existing regulations are not appropriate for CAV-Fs, recommendations and adaptations have been proposed to support safe and practical application. Remote monitoring and tracking of vehicles are critical for ensuring load security, quick and effective incident response, and management of documents and communications between parties. Loading/unloading procedures are significantly more important than in crewed vehicles, with load segregation and recording of all activity being of key importance. Other recommendations relate to training provision, vehicle specifications, and product health monitoring.

Designing a Medical Supply Chain Network Considering the Risk of Supply and Flexible Production in Two-Stage Uncertain Conditions

In the green supply chain approach, all the links that are put together to provide a product or service are considered, and strategic and operational decisions are made to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the entire chain. At the same time, the environmental effects should be minimized. In this research, a nonlinear mixed-integer multiobjective model is developed to design a green closed-loop supply chain for medical products. In this supply chain, the echelons include supplier, manufacturer, warehouse, and customer in the forward supply chain and collection centers, repair services, and disposal centers in the reverse supply chain. In the proposed model, four objectives of customer satisfaction, environmental effects, supply risk, and total costs of the supply chain were considered. The developed model is implemented in a supply chain of medical products, and after optimizing the model, the main results including location and capacity of facilities, planning for flexible production, purchase of materials, service and maintenance plan, product transfer, and inventory level are determined and analyzed.

The essence of the object of criminal law protection the structures of dopping crimes

The subject of the scientific research is social relations, arising in the process of preparation and participation of the athlete in competitions at the international, Russian and regional levels. The purpose of the research identify the limits of criminal legal protection of social relations in the sphere of sports, related to the consumption of medical products of stimulating and other effects on the human body. Methods and objects of research. The presented work uses general scientific and private scientific methods of cognition, the main of which is: dialectical, formal logical, analysis, synthesis, system-structuraland etс. The object of the research is represented by a complex of relations in the field of sports, the peculiarities of establishing prohibition on the consumption of doping drugs, as well as criminal liability for its violation. The results and conclusions of the research are boils down to the need for systematization and meaningful correction of criminal law norms on liability for declination of the victim to consume drugs that have a stimulating and other effect, and using these drugs against or besides the will of the athlete-victim.

The substantiation of the conceptual model for countering the spread and combating counterfeit medicines and medical products in Ukraine

The problem of drug counterfeiting is global; therefore, it is relevant for all countries of the world. However, the effectiveness combating the spread of counterfeit medicines (CM) differs in different countries, as evidenced by data on the level of counterfeit. Ensuring proper quality control of drugs in all areas of their circulation requires national regulatory authorities to systematically address these urgent problems; primarily, this concerns the pharmaceutical legislation to counteract the spread of counterfeit medicines and medical devices (MD), as well as to implement the effective state policy in this extremely important area that determines the national security of the state.

Total Release of 21 Indicator Pharmaceuticals Listed by the Swedish Medical Products Agency from Wastewater Treatment Plants to Surface Water Bodies in the 1.3 Million Populated County Skåne (Scania), Sweden

In 2017, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency published a report on advanced wastewater treatment for the removal of pharmaceutical residues and stated that advanced treatment should be implemented where it will make the largest difference from an environmental perspective. However, the report also concluded that this need cannot be specified with existing data, but consideration must be made of local conditions. Two considerations are (1) the discharged amount of pharmaceutical into receiving water bodies and (2) the turnover of water in the recipient, where the highest risks are related to recipients with a low water turnover and low dilution. The current project comprised eight different WWTPs distributed throughout the entire County Skåne (Scania) in Sweden, with a population of ca. 1,300,000 persons. In total, 21 of 22 pharmaceuticals were analyzed according to the list proposed by the Swedish Medical Products Agency 2015. The results show that large amounts of pharmaceuticals are released from the WWTPs yearly to Scanian recipients. The total discharge of pharmaceuticals from the eight treatment plants adds up to 71 kg of these 21 substances alone, mainly comprising metoprolol, which is a drug that lowers blood pressure, and the analgesic drug diclofenac. Additionally, carbamazepine, losartan, naproxen and oxazepam were present in significant concentrations. These represented three illnesses that are very common: high blood pressure, inflammation/pain and depression/anxiety. The concentrations were generally in line with previous national Swedish screenings. It was estimated that, when one million cubic meters (1,000,000 m3) of wastewater is discharged, almost 4 kg of the 21 pharmaceuticals is released. The total volume wastewater release by the >90 WWTPs in Scania was estimated to 152,887,000 m3, which corresponded to 590 kg/year. The investigated 21 drugs cover only a small part of many hundred pharmaceuticals that are in use in Sweden. Thus, most likely, one or several tons of pharmaceuticals leak out to the Scanian recipients annually. The analysis of river samples shows that the dilution of wastewater is a key parameter in reducing concentrations. However, some locations have remarkably high concentrations, which occur when the volume wastewater is large in relation to the flow in the river. These kinds of regional results are of importance when selecting where advanced treatment should be prioritized in a first instance, as requested by the Swedish EPA.

Liability of legal entities as a prerequisite for the implementation of the Medicrime Convention

It is examined in the article the provisions of current criminal law in terms of compliance with international legal obligations, which Ukraine has been taken while ratified the Convention on the counterfeiting of medical products and similar crimes involving threats to public health (the Medicrime Convention) in terms of liability of legal entities for the creation and circulation of counterfeit medical products. It was proved that in fact there is no such responsibility, and, therefore, the obligation is not fulfilled. A number of explanatory notes were also analyzed, which determined the range of criminal offenses for the commission of which measures of a criminal nature may be applied to a legal entity. It is established that no obstacles or arguments for non-inclusion in paragraph 1 of part 1 of Art. 96-3 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine there are no pharmaceutical crimes. An analysis of the leading international experience in the implementation of liability of legal entities for these acts, in particular, Spain, Germany and Switzerland. In addition, judgments of foreign states, which proves that pharmaceutical crimes are crimes that can be committed by transnational organized crime. Therefore, the obligation to expand the range of crimes under Part 1 of Art. 96-3 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine follows from the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. It was emphasized that in order to effectively counter the spread of counterfeit medical products, it is necessary to expand the powers of the State Medical Service to control the quality of medical products without prior notice of inspection of business entities (Law of Ukraine" On Basic Principles of State Supervision (Control)" 2007 № 877). It is necessary to bring the national legislation in line with Art. 11 of the Medicrime Convention to escape from all drawbacks due to expansion range of crimes that could help to make responsible the legal entities in criminal law. For this purpose, it is mandatory to add paragraph 1 Part 1 of Art. 96-3 by reference to Articles 305 and 321-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

Strength and fracture mechanism during torsion of ultrafine-grained austenitic steel for medical applications

The article considers evaluation of torsional strength and fracture of austenitic corrosion-resistant steel 08Kh18N9 with an ultrafine-grained (UFG) and coarse-grained (CG) structure, widely used in medicine for the production of plates, screws, rods for bone osteosynthesis and other medical products. The structure of the CG steel was studied using an Axiovert 40 MAT metallographic microscope, and the fine structure of the UFG steel was investigated with a JEM-2100 transmission electron microscope. Torsion tests of the cylindrical samples with a diameter of 10 mm were carried out at a temperature of 20 °C on MK-50 installation. JEOL JCM-6000 scanning electron microscope was used for the microfractographic studies of fracture surfaces. The analysis of the “Torque - torsion angle” diagrams showed that the torsional ultimate strength (τt) and yield strength (τ0.3) of UFG steel increase by 1.3 - 3.8 times, and the relative shear (g) decreases by 2.4 times in comparison with CG steel. High values of torsional strength properties of UFG steel make it possible to provide high torque without destroying the product. Consequently UFG steel 08Kh18N9 in comparison with CG steel is a more promising material for the manufacture of medical screws and other medical products that experience significant loads during the torsion process. Three areas were identified on the surface of all fractures: fibrous central part, transitional (middle) part, and a relatively smooth peripheral part. Fracture begins with the formation of shear pits in the middle and peripheral parts, which, with further rotation of the sample, are completely rubbed out (in case CG steel), or remain (in case of UFG steel). Final failure occurs under the action of normal stresses in the central part of the sample.