The demand for personalised medicine is rapidly increasing, driven by the high costs of advanced therapies and the need for flexible drug delivery methods. This is especially crucial in paediatric medicine, where medications are often crushed or weighed per dose, leading to errors, inaccuracies, and reduced effectiveness. Organisations like the National Institutes of Health (NIH), European Medicines Agency (EMA), and World Health Organisation (WHO) have all emphasised the need for age-appropriate formulations. However, traditional manufacturing methods are not equipped to meet the scale and precision required for personalised medicines. 3D printing (3DP), or additive manufacturing, is emerging as a revolutionary solution for personalised medicine production. FabRx, the lead partner in this project, developed the world's first pharmaceutical 3D printer, the M3DIMAKER, a GMP-compliant extrusion-based printer. Despite this innovation, challenges remain in developing stable drug-loaded filaments due to issues with formulation, rheology, mechanical, and thermal properties. Printing parameters such as temperature, speed, direction, and object geometry significantly impact drug quality, while machine settings like nozzle size and extrusion are difficult to optimise, particularly with sensitive or costly materials. These parameters across materials, operations, and machine settings are interdependent, making their optimisation a critical challenge for productivity, waste reduction, emissions control, energy efficiency, and resource optimisation. To overcome these challenges, FabRx Ltd, the global leader in FDM drug printing, is partnering with Teesside University to develop a digital twin for pharmaceutical 3D printing. This AI-powered digital twin will analyse and monitor large datasets in real time to optimise every aspect of the process, from material formulation to machine and operational parameters. Key innovations of this project include: * Faster and more reliable implementation of 3D printing technologies in pharmaceutical manufacturing. * The ability to print tablets of any shape and size within seconds. * Significant cost reductions in the production of personalised medicines by addressing material and machine inefficiencies. * Reduced waste by eliminating excessive physical trials and manual adjustments, driven by AI-based optimisation. * Customised dosage settings tailored to individual patients, improving treatment outcomes. * Enhanced resource efficiency, including reduced energy consumption, higher yield, and increased productivity. * The ability to produce small, cost-effective batches of drugs, substantially lowering production and testing costs compared to traditional methods. This breakthrough technology will lead to more efficient, cost-effective, and precise production of personalised medicines, enabling significant advancements in healthcare and improving patient outcomes across various medical fields.

Age-UK found that 2 million people over the age of 65 are taking at least seven prescribed medicines per day. The number of prescribed medications taken increases as people age. Consistent managing and consumption of medications is important for successful recovery or continued management of a chronic illness and disease. This project will develop SmartDose, an integrated solution that allows doctors to prescribe custom medication to patients, allows pharmacies to manufacture this medication and patients to conveniently collect and take this medication in a smart pill dispenser device. SmartDose will use a 3D pharmaceutical printer to print the custom medication, with the doctor specifying the shapes, colours, sizes, and doses based on an individual patient's need. The consortium is led by FabRx, a specialist biotech company, focused on developing 3D printing technology for fabricating pharmaceuticals and medical devices. They are joined by Brunel University London (BUL), who have developed ultrasonic and imaging technology that can improve the printing process. Our Eureka partner, Yongatek, are a research and development company who have developed products for the healthcare sector and will develop the prototype system.

Age-UK found that 2 million people over the age of 65 are taking at least seven prescribed medicines per day. The number of prescribed medications taken increases as people age. Consistent managing and consumption of medications is important for successful recovery or continued management of a chronic illness and disease. This project will develop SmartDose, an integrated solution that allows doctors to prescribe custom medication to patients, allows pharmacies to manufacture this medication and patients to conveniently collect and take this medication in a smart pill dispenser device. SmartDose will use a 3D pharmaceutical printer to print the custom medication, with the doctor specifying the shapes, colours, sizes, and doses based on an individual patient's need. The consortium is led by FabRx, a specialist biotech company, focused on developing 3D printing technology for fabricating pharmaceuticals and medical devices. They are joined by Brunel University London (BUL), who have developed ultrasonic and imaging technology that can improve the printing process. Our Eureka partner, Yongatek, are a research and development company who have developed products for the healthcare sector and will develop the prototype system.

"This innovation is focused on improving the production of solid-dose medicines (tablets). Currently, capitally intensive processes are used to produce large volumes of identical tablets. The applicants have identified clear market demand for a flexible point-of-dispensing, manufacturing approach such that bespoke tablet formulations can be produce on a desktop machine. Such an approach can provide greater control of the dose strength enabling medications to be personalised to recipient's needs. This team is developing such a novel 3D tablet printing ""3DP"" manufacturing and supply chain. The vision is to produce bespoke doses of personalised medicines. As an example, a long-term goal is to enable production of personalised multi-drug combinations for a patient or defined group of patients with cognitive impairment such that their entire multi-faceted dosage regimen is drastically simplified; such a ""polypill"", even in a simpler, non-personalised form, has been a long-established goal for dosing to elderly patients but the development is not feasible using standard manufacturing processes. This team's commercial goal is to create the systems and materials which enable production of validated, traceable pharmaceutical products which are suitable for human use, and commercially to establish printing as a pharmaceutical development service to companies researching personalisation of medicines. Contextually, partner 1 (Katjes Fassin) has developed a food grade 3D printing system. FabRx (the leading pharmaceutical 3D printing specialists) wishes to adopt and modify this system for use in the pharmaceutical sector. The challenge is; 1 -- limited validation of use of the types of food grade materials that form the basis of the 3DP tablets and 2 -- development of the tablet production hardware to provide in-situ confirmation of the table dose (key regulatory requirement)."