Patients of All Ages Depend on Reliable Nutritional Deliveries Every 28 Days
Axelcare provides liquid nutritional supplements to over 12,000 patients across Switzerland. While the majority are elderly, Axelcare supports patients of all ages, including pediatric patients. Services are delivered at patients’ homes, at partner facilities (nursing homes/care homes), and in sheltered apartments for the elderly. A network of roughly 20 nurses and 30 dietitians visits patients at home and at these partner facilities, assesses their nutritional needs, and identifies what they require. Patients, their relatives, or home care services then place orders by contacting Axelcare’s call center within the patient services department, and Axelcare fulfills them on a strict 28-day cycle.
Some patients receive bottled supplements. Others rely on nasogastric feeding systems, pumps that deliver measured nutrients directly to the stomach for patients who can no longer swallow. When a pump fails, Axelcare sends someone to fix or replace it, sometimes within the hour. The work is never life-threatening, but it is always time-sensitive.
With every active patient assigned to a specific route and delivery date, even a small scheduling imbalance can ripple across the entire organization, from the call center that confirms orders to the warehouse team that prepares them.
Hand-Drawn Maps and Manual Planning Hold the Company Back
When Distribution Manager Nicolas joined Axelcare in 2019, the company had roughly 3,000 patients and 30 employees. Route planning was done entirely by hand. Staff sketched delivery paths on paper maps, and two to three people spent significant hours building and adjusting routes manually.
There was no software dedicated to the task and no geographic visibility into where patients were located. As the patient base grew, this approach became unsustainable.
Axelcare Builds a Geographic Command Center for 12,000 Patients
Using the Route4Me last mile transportation platform, Axelcare imported its full patient database and gained, for the first time, a clear geographic picture of where every patient was located.
Nicolas grouped towns and villages together into logical delivery clusters, built structured routes territory by territory, and worked through the map until every delivery point was covered across Switzerland.
Unlike companies that generate routes on the fly from incoming orders, Axelcare assigns every new patient to a predefined route the moment they become active. Delivery calendars are built a full year in advance. In October 2025, Nicolas had already scheduled every delivery date for every route throughout 2026. The platform made this level of forward planning possible and manageable.
One Person Now Manages What Previously Required a Team of Three
Before the Route4Me last mile transportation platform, two to three employees worked on route creation and maintenance. Today, Nicolas handles it alone. The hours freed up were redirected to other tasks rather than eliminated. Axelcare redeployed team members instead of reducing headcount.
The impact extends well beyond the routing desk. Because routes determine when patients are called, when orders are prepared, and when deliveries go out, balanced routing directly controls the daily workload of every department. The platform enables Nicolas to balance preparation volumes across each day, week, and month, preventing lopsided scheduling where one day sees 400 preparation slips and the next sees 800.
Axelcare Works Toward Fully Automated Monthly Route Rebuilds
The company has quadrupled since 2019, growing from 3,000 patients to over 12,000 and from 30 to 120 employees. To keep pace, Axelcare is working toward fully automating its monthly route optimization cycle using Route4Me’s API.
The goal: on the first of each month, the latest patient list will export from Axelcare’s ERP into the Route4Me last mile transportation platform, which will then rebuild every route across every territory according to predefined business rules — total route duration, number of itineraries per zone, and optimization profiles — without manual intervention. No more pulling patients off overloaded routes by hand. No more monthly audits.
About Axelcare
Axelcare is a Swiss healthcare company specializing in home delivery of liquid nutritional supplements. While the majority of patients are elderly, Axelcare supports patients of all ages, including pediatric cases, delivering to patients’ homes, partner facilities (nursing homes/care homes), and sheltered apartments. Working alongside a network of nurses and dietitians, Axelcare manages recurring 28-day delivery cycles for over 12,000 patients across Switzerland. The company also supports patients who require nasogastric feeding systems, providing equipment maintenance and urgent on-site service. Since its founding, Axelcare has grown from 30 to 120 employees and continues to expand rapidly, with all patient services almost fully reimbursed by Swiss health insurance.
