Global demands of the pharmaceutical market

I was recently asked to provide my opinion regarding global instrument markets for a round robin piece for the March issue of Drug Development & Delivery.

Sometimes you question the merit of these activities; however this one was a subject close to my heart, looking at analytical instrument investment with a particular focus on the Pharmaceutical sector.

The special feature has now been published and is well worth a read. It is titled: ‘Analytical Instruments: Global Demands, Innovations & Cost Savings’

Excerpt:

“There is a global demand for analytical instruments, and industry players are responding with product innovations. Despite the economic slowdown, end-user spending in the US analytical instrument market is expected to increase from $6.6 billion in 2011 to $7.3 billion by 2014.” Drug Development & Delivery, March 2012, Vol 12, No 2, pp45

The article speculates that the pharmaceutical industry and pharma analytical technology (PAT) initiative is helping to sustain the market for process instruments.

Contributors were selected from various instrument manufacturers and asked to describe their most recent offerings for the Pharma market and how these were developed to answer the market-driving demands for increased accuracy, throughput and reporting efficiency in lower-cost systems.

Ease-of-use is key to better throughput

Here at Malvern, we believe that ease-of-use is the key to better throughput and, as products become more sophisticated, the level of characterization and analytical details required to understand and control their behaviours during processing is ever more important.

As you might imagine, to illustrate my opinions I focused on the benefits of the Mastersizer 3000. As our latest instrument release, it has been developed specifically to answer customer needs, reducing measurement times while gathering enhanced data. Additionally, because the software includes embedded support, the instrument can be operated by non-experts. For these reasons it is the ideal instrument for pharmaceutical manufacturers making the application of Quality by Design (QbD) and PAT methods straightforward and efficient.

The article finished with an optimistic upbeat note from myself, which indicated the Pharma sector was still buoyant and investing despite what the headlines would have you believe.

or in the words of the song,

“Don’t Worry, Be Happy………….”