The manufacturing of pharmaceuticals is an expensive process that requires a large investment, you need to manufacture millions of pills to make a profit, you need special facilities, expert personnel, and advanced technology (currently, a lot of robots perform routine operations but humans are still needed). The final product will fulfill manufacturing specifications so that one pill will be very similar to another. But we can ask: are the needs of patients consuming these pills as uniform as those tablets? Certainly not.
Each patient might differ to another in many characteristics relevant to medicine (height, sex, weight, race, age, and so on), do we need identical pills then? Shouldn’t they be customized to the needs of each patient? It would be helpful if a patient, after consultation, would leave the doctor’s office with their prescriptions ready to pick up at a facility that was manufacturing the tablets just after the doctor sent out the order. In the current system, prescriptions are manufactured then distributed to pharmacies, could we come up with a model where these are manufactured after the doctor has assessed the patient needs?
Up until a few years ago, this was not possible but thanks to the proliferation of 3D printers, this might become a reality soon. With 3D printing prescriptions could be manufactured in a short amount of time. In fact, the doctor prescribing does not need to be in the same room where they are being printed. They can send the order to the pharmacist (which would now need to be both certified as pharmacists and experts in 3D printing or organic materials) who in turn creates the data file needed for printing (which is a CAD file that controls the printer through a connected PC or using a wireless network) and send out the order to the printer or printers. Another model would involve the patient having the printer, this could work for cases where the prescription is specialized. The patient can receive the materials and they would set up the printer (or a pharmacist would do it for them on site) and send the order on time for the next dose.
There are currently manufacturers trying 3D printing for pharmaceuticals and they have found promising results. For example, Aprecia®, an FDA-approved pharmaceutical company, has already on the market a FDA-approved product they claim is better than tablets manufactured by compression (they have a patented process).
Because the 3D printing works by adding layer after layer, there could be the opportunity of creating a “polypill”. Many patients are required to take many medications at the same time, during the same intervals. Why not create a single pill with all those prescriptions? They could be layered one on top of the other, each layer would have the correct dosage. Although some might argue the future is near, there are still many hurdles to make 3D printing a standard procedure in medicine. The Pharma industry, pharmacists associations, doctors, government, and consumers all should agree on the safety measures and minimum standards required to fabricate these prescriptions. The costs may still be prohibiting, although 3D printers are cheap, pills cannot be fabricated in any pharmacy room, they would need to build (likely expensive) facilities that can serve as clean rooms.
As with any new paradigm, 3D printing may take some time to get established in the drug industry. But as with many fields where this technology has been applied, it is just a matter of time before you pick up your freshly printed prescriptions at any pharmacy near you.
References
Sadia M., Alhnan M.A., Ahmed W., Jackson M.J. (2018) 3D Printing of Pharmaceuticals. In: Jackson M., Ahmed W. (eds) Micro and Nanomanufacturing Volume II. Springer, Cham.
This is dummy text. It is not meant to be read. Accordingly, it is difficult to figure out when to end it. But then, this is dummy text. It is not meant to be read. Period.
ConversionConversion EmoticonEmoticon