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Refrigerator-Sized Machine Can Print Pills on Demand (dailymail.co.uk)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the make-two-pills-and-call-me-in-the-morning dept.

MIT Researchers have created a new "Pharmacy on Demand" prototype that can produce 1,000 doses of medication every 24 hours. Their new system "can be easily transported in case of outbreaks, supply shortage or if a manufacturing plant shuts down," notes the Daily Mail, and the on-demand technology can address many of the challenges in supplying medications, for example regions without facilities for storing pills. "The dosages don't have to have long-term stability," says the head of MIT's Chemistry department. "People line up, you make it, and they take it." The DARPA-funded researchers produced Valium, Prozac, Benadryl, and lidocaine, and demonstrated that "Within a few hours we could change from one compound to the other." The machine can also switch to a different drug type within a few hours, making it economical to produce drugs needed by only a small number of patients.

13 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. The future of dosage? by damn_registrars · · Score: 5, Informative

    More drugs than people realize should be dosed in proportion to the patient's weight. Physicians often go for the closest size of pill to make it easier for the patient; if we could have a machine automatically print the pills of an exact size every month, that could be an important change.

    It would be interesting to see if it can do some of the new tamper-resistant coatings as well.

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    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
    1. Re:The future of dosage? by damn_registrars · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The pharmaceutical industry did not create the dosage problem. They are responsible for plenty of problems, but the variety of sizes of humans is not one of them.

      For that matter, the machine would not be producing the drugs, it would just be packaging them. The drugs go in to the machine in some sort of loose form and the machine prints them into pills. Manufacturing is serious chemistry that would be hard to do in a fully automated manner in the field.

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      Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
    2. Re:The future of dosage? by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The funny part is, this machine is nothing special. they have had powdered candy into pill pressing vending machines for 10 YEARS.

      My daughter used to use them on vacation all the time, the kids put in the $2.00 push the buttons to drop in the different color powders and then they press go and it presses the bin of powder into hard candies for them. It is a willy wonka brand.

      So the pharma companies are 10 years behind the candy companies It's very easy to convert the candy machine to a medicine machine. same size pill for everyone, you just adjust the medicine to filler ratio, drop those powders to a mixing chamber and then to the presser, Exactly how they do it in a factory. you could have a rotating die if you just want to adjust pill size, but adding filler is far easier.

      Problem is, their machine either needs to have separate hermetically sealed sections for each medicine, or you will have cross contamination. and who is going to wear the hazmat suit to clean the thing? it will have medical compound dust all over the inside.

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      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    3. Re:The future of dosage? by patabongo · · Score: 2

      For that matter, the machine would not be producing the drugs, it would just be packaging them. The drugs go in to the machine in some sort of loose form and the machine prints them into pills. Manufacturing is serious chemistry that would be hard to do in a fully automated manner in the field.

      The third sentence is correct, but the first is wrong. This new machine does actually do complex chemical synthesis; for an overview of what's impressive about it (as well as which of the researchers' claims are not feasible) see this post: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pi....

  2. Re:Just curious by damn_registrars · · Score: 5, Funny

    What kind of "outbreak" would require any of those medications: Valium, Prozac, Benadryl, and Lidocaine ???

    I predict Cleveland Ohio will see such an outbreak this July. We may see one on a national level in November as well.

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    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
  3. Hey wait a minute.... by 50000BTU_barbecue · · Score: 2

    Just how far are we from Niven's autodocs now? We could medicate the psychopaths among us, so instead of becoming CEOs that steal and plunder ever more, we could neutralize their harmful tendencies humanely, and finally usher in the post-industrial leisure society?

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    Mostly random stuff.
    1. Re:Hey wait a minute.... by newcastlejon · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Just how far are we from Niven's autodocs now?

      A very, very long way. Autodocs were more about fully automated surgery and organ replacement rather than dispensing drugs. I particularly remember a case where one of the Wus is exposed to vacuum and the autodoc aboard ship replaces both lungs without any human intervention; one would have to assume that people are flying around with all manner of organs stored aboard just in case. Before we have anything like that I think we'll see something more like an automated pharmacy that takes blood samples, analyses them and manufactures/dispenses exactly what the patient needs... even medication for paranoid schizophrenics.

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      If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
  4. Good bye Martin Shkreli by squiggleslash · · Score: 2

    Can it be used to economically produce Daraprim, and also would Martin Shkreli be hurt in any way if one of these machines, programmed to make Daraprim pills, were to fall on his head?

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    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    1. Re:Good bye Martin Shkreli by SNRatio · · Score: 2

      A refrigerator size synthesizer will be a hideously expensive way to make drugs which then can't be legally sold except on the black market. I.e., the FDA has to approve each manufacturing site individually.

    2. Re:Good bye Martin Shkreli by ColdWetDog · · Score: 2

      We don't need anything to make Daraprim. We just have to get the FDA out of the 19th century and understand that the REST OF THE WORLD can manufacture perfectly fine chemicals. Even places like Columbia and Afghanistan. It's not hard.

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      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    3. Re:Good bye Martin Shkreli by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's not they are out of date, its that the FDA is owned and paid for by big US pharma companies.

      The FDA STILL says that getting drugs from canada for a discount is DANGEROUS!

      Canadian drugs are the EXACT SAME drugs in the USA and made on the same line, their government just doesn't allow the companies to violently rape their citizens on price.

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      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    4. Re:Good bye Martin Shkreli by mi · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Would you rather [...]

      Now, you are offering me a choice. FDA does not. And I don't need to "look into it" — I have a very close friend waiting for FDA's approval of "experimental" treatment for him. He's been waiting for over 18 months now.

      I'm more worried about what happens to our medical system when doctors and companies have the freedom to put random chemicals into people's bodies.

      Doctors would not have that freedom my way either. But people would.

      Neither your way nor mine is bullet-proof — indeed, nothing would be. But my way preserves people's freedom, whereas yours takes the freedom away. This alone ought to be enough for my way to be accepted as better, but that's not all.

      Your way is not remarkably safer either! The FDA was created after some spectacular abuses of patients' trust by "doctors" and "chemists", FDA has since had scandalous failures of its own, when the approved medicines and advice had to be withdrawn and reversed. As forewarned, we surrendered an essential liberty in exchange for temporary safety — and lost both...

      It quickly becomes a situation where some data is much worse than no data at all.

      Yes, yes, and too much freedom is too dangerous. Yours is a Statist argument — the State government knows best, citizens ought to defer to their benevolent and omniscient betters. And until those betters have enough data, the citizens should keep dying — because taking care of oneself causes chaos.

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      In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
  5. Re:If you have the chemical compounds... by SNRatio · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is a proof of concept flow synthesizer that makes the APIs (chemical compounds) and then formulates them with excipients to make the pills. Flow synthesis is definitely going to become more and more useful, but for emergency situations it's absolutely useless. You'd be much better off sending a 50 gallon carboy full of drugs then an easily damaged frig size synthesizer, drums full of solvents and reagents, a generator and gas to run it, etc. It's like sending a 3D printer on a camping trip instead of a box of plastic cutlery.