With personalized medicine drawing closer, manufacturing and packaging flexibility will become even more essential.
Just a few years ago a former colleague scoffed at my enthusiasm about personalized medicine, predicting it was a good 20 years away. Yet scientific advances based largely around our growing understanding of the human genome are advancing the move to more individualized patient treatment. The question here: What does that mean for healthcare packagers?
A PharmaManufacturing.com article, "When manufacturing and packaging merge," notes, "Printing and packaging must follow suit and become a more seamless and integrated part of operations, able to change whenever the needs of the manufacturer or consumer change." That's a tough task considering that manufacturers have often invested big bucks into pharmaceutical packaging lines designed to produce in commercial volumes.
Flexibility on a plant-wide basis is the focus of another PharmaManufacturing.com story that also addresses the important matter of cost containment.
