Santexcel HAD: modernized, traceable logistics thanks to AntsRoute

Published on 18 November 2025 • Reading time: 6 min read

Facing growing activity and increasingly complex logistics flows, SANTEXCEL HAD (Hospital-at-Home) chose to rely on AntsRoute’s route-optimization software and its connector with the MHCARE system to improve the preparation and home delivery of medicines and equipment. This digital transformation gives time back to care teams while ensuring end-to-end traceability.

Table of contents:

• A fast-growing Hospital-at-Home organization with rising logistics needs
• Reinventing HaH logistics: a system to rethink from the ground up
• AntsRoute & MHCARE: a duo powering HaH patient supplies
• Optimized HaH logistics and clinicians refocused on care
• Tracked deliveries to improve the reliability of HaH logistics
• What’s next?

A fast-growing Hospital-at-Home organization with rising logistics needs

SANTEXCEL HAD is an association that holds three Hospital-at-Home authorizations in the Franche-Comté region, France.

It now relies on four branches – Besançon, Étupes, Pontarlier, and Jura, in France – each covering a radius of about 50 km, and cares for over two hundred patients per day across the area. The organization also operates a hospital pharmacy on two sites: one in Besançon and the other in Étupes.

Every day, the pharmaceutical and logistics teams in the hospital pharmacies handle the preparation and delivery of the equipment and medicines needed for patients’ home care. This organizational challenge has been amplified by the strong growth that Hospital-at-Home (HaH) has seen in recent years.

Delivery driver for equipment and medication for the company SANTEXCEL HAD.

Reinventing Hospital-at-Home logistics: a system to rethink from the ground up

Until recently, route planning still relied on paper tools or Excel templates inherited from a time when the number of patients was much lower.

“We had reached the limits of the system. Everything had to be rethought: volumes had doubled, paper-based traceability was far too time-consuming, and we needed to be more responsive in meeting patients’ needs,” says Apolline Poirson, SANTEXCEL HAD’s logistics and procurement manager.

In late 2023, the team began exploring a planning and tracking tool for preparations and deliveries. After several demos, they chose AntsRoute, won over by its clear interface, the team’s responsiveness, and its ability to understand the specific needs of the Hospital-at-Home sector.

AntsRoute & MHCARE: a duo powering HaH patient supplies and cross-team coordination

To fit the hospital environment, SANTEXCEL HAD relies on the AntsRoute – MHCARE connector, the electronic patient record (EPR) software developed by MHCOMM.

In practice, data from MHCARE patient records is automatically synced to AntsRoute, enabling route generation based on patients and their locations, the type of care pathway (fully community-based/independent practitioners, mixed, or fully HaH), as well as constraints specific to HaH organizations and hospital pharmacy workflows.

Split across the four HaH sites, SANTEXCEL HAD’s logistics staff, who act as both preparers and drivers, use the APK PACKSCAN app, developed by AntsRoute specifically for SANTEXCEL HAD, to follow the daily preparation plans and link each prepared crate to a patient using a unique barcode.

This system ensures end-to-end traceability: both the equipment and the crates, reusable plastic bins that are costly and were previously untracked, are now linked to a specific patient. This traceability makes it possible to track the delivered equipment and preparations, and also to locate and retrieve crates left at patients’ homes.

SANTEXCEL HAD’s drivers then use the AntsRoute mobile app to carry out their routes. Everything is centralized there: the route, patient list, loading and unloading steps with scanning and mismatch prevention, both for regular, planned routes and for urgent deliveries added over the course of the day.

The SANTEXCEL HAD teams use PACKSCAN, the mobile application developed by AntsRoute.

Optimized HaH logistics and clinicians refocused on care

One of the first benefits was fine-grained sectorization of routes. Each HaH branch now has clearly defined geographic zones (by towns, neighborhoods, etc.) and fixed delivery days: a major visibility boost for preparation teams, optimized travel for drivers, and a smoother workload across all hospital pharmacies.

“We’ve been able to automate day-by-day planning, track preparation progress, and, above all, digitally trace every flow, including emergencies. It’s a major change,” explains Apolline Poirson.

Urgent flows, for example, last-minute deliveries due to stock shortages, a deterioration in a patient’s condition, or a new treatment such as antibiotic therapy, are now handled directly via AntsRoute.

They’re carried out mostly in the afternoon, once the regular routes are finished. They’re added to the logistics teams’ routes or assigned to clinicians when they visit the patients concerned.

Concretely, you just create a new task in the app: the tool then queries the care plans in MHCARE to check whether the delivery must be made the same day by logistics or can be tied to a clinician’s visit later that day.

☝️ Result: fewer unnecessary trips, better use of resources, and clinicians spending more time with patients, while ensuring deliveries are made on time.

“Drivers deliver more, clinicians care more.”

The AntsRoute route optimization software.

Tracked deliveries to improve the reliability and viability of HaH logistics

Implementing the MHCARE connector has enabled automatic synchronization of patient data, care types, and delivery frequency. Collaboration between the AntsRoute and SANTEXCEL HAD teams also made it easier to adapt the software to HaH constraints, where there’s no one-size-fits-all rule or standard organization.

Using AntsRoute’s software has also made it possible to digitize and track all processes that were previously recorded manually on paper, or not tracked at all, such as urgent flows, greatly simplifying reporting.

In just a few clicks, hospital pharmacy staff can now pull up the patients to be prepared for each site and see the status of every preparation (in progress, completed, scheduled, delivery to be made, etc.). Each flow is also identifiable by patient, providing complete visibility over the services performed. The benefit is twofold: preparers now have reliable, live-updated preparation sheets, and hospital pharmacy managers can monitor activity within their facilities in real time with a single click.

For their part, the logistics staff now have all the information on routes and crates to be delivered right on their phones, even on the go: a complete mobile solution.

What’s next?

Apolline Poirson would like to keep up the momentum and, ideally, extend the use of AntsRoute.

“The ideal would be to have a single optimization tool for all routes, including those of clinicians, to further improve traceability. Our experience with AntsRoute and the hospital pharmacies at SANTEXCEL HAD shows it’s possible: the solution is reliable, suited to the realities on the ground, and backed by a very responsive, attentive technical team. We were able to roll out features tailored to our needs without making the tool more complex. It’s a true partnership,” notes Apolline Poirson.

A fruitful collaboration that offers concrete answers to the coordination, traceability, and efficiency challenges essential to scaling Hospital-at-Home.