By Wayne K. Way, Ph.D.
Millipore Sigma
Pharma Analysis & QC Strategy
In today’s pharma research, production, method development and QC laboratories, working efficiently is critical.
Controlling operating costs
Increasing operating costs are putting enormous pressure on pharmaceutical companies to improve laboratory efficiency while maintaining quality and compliance. Such pressures are auguring a new age of innovation in lab efficiency and productivity in pharma, making us reevaluate many industry-standard practices. New approaches to improving lab efficiency and productivity are following other industrial trends in reducing process complexity, while increasing digitalization, ergonomics, convenience, and instrument/data connectivity.
Digitally connected labs improve efficiency within regulated environments
Despite significant regulatory constraints inherent to the industry, there is pressure to improve well established protocols, pushing the need for more efficient reagent management. We have introduced ‘smart’ labeling and packaging to eliminate the need to transfer label data to paper or manually track chemical inventories. A real improvement for pharmaceutical QC labs has been the introduction of intelligent packaging for titration (3S and Smart Chemicals) equipped with RFID technology enabling automated data transfer between reagents and titrators. Common chemicals as well as premium-grade solvents for demanding regulated analytical applications are now available labeled with 2D data matrix barcodes containing all relevant usage, shelf life, SDS, and other documentation for easy access or transfer to your LIMS or ERP system.
Milli-Q® laboratory ultrapure & pure water purification systems have been redesigned with touch screens, simple, intuitive dispensing, and digital connectivity for easier data management. “Connected labs” have reagent bottles talking to instruments, instruments talking to other instruments, and all sharing data with the techs, lab managers, and even suppliers.
The LANEXO™ Lab Inventory, Safety and Compliance Management System is a new comprehensive digital lab reagent inventory tracking solution designed to create operating efficiencies, improve safety and traceability, and facilitate compliance in highly-regulated environments.
BrightLab, An integrated lab platform designed to streamline research workflows, reduce cost and accelerate discovery offers a single platform that combines instrument connectivity, electronic notebook functionality, inventory management and a growing ecosystem of tools developed by our experts.
User-driven efficiency innovations in the pharma lab
For important but largely repetitive and manual pharmaceutical lab procedures, small ergonomic changes to heavily used tools like sterile filters and plates for dissolution testing and other applications are hugely popular with lab technicians because the improvements are based directly from years of user input while at the same time adapting usage to the next generation of automated liquid handlers. Still further trends in the use of “ready-to-use” reagents and certified reference materials, that are premixed, preassembled, or conveniently bundled is growing in the industry.
Whether you are looking to upgrade critical capital equipment or just improve some basic laboratory workflows, the trend in pharma for faster, easier, but still safe and compliant consumables and processes will continue to shape the nature of innovation in reagent and instrument platform development. Please visit our Pharma Analysis & QC webpage and ask our experts for support at any stage of your method development and validation.