‘No Frills Drugs’ push Pharmaceutical companies to look for a cure

The pharmaceutical industry is sharing the symptoms of the economic downturn. Counterfeit drug manufacturing and parallel trading is causing some serious side effects to the ailing industry and leaders from GSK, Bayer, AstraZeneca, Novartis and Pfizer met at this year’s illustrious NGP Summit to help come up with a cure.

The aims of the summit were to enable these business leaders to review their current manufacturing technologies and allow them to concentrate resources on their core competences - developing new drugs.

Visionaries such as Steve Dreamer, Head of global Pharmaceutical Engineering for Novartis, Rene Labatut, VP Global Manufacturing technology for Sanofi Pasteur and Gerald Orlik, VP EMEA / COO for Mylan met along with many others to discuss their plans to work with new technological advances to combat the problems faced and increase production while reducing waste. The Summit also heard from innovators such as Geodis Wilson, BP Labels & Payne Security, Nano Guardian and Hagen & Co who addressed the pharma elite on combating “impossible problems” by reducing costs at an entry level and minimizing waste, showing how Drug manufacturers could save millions.

“Anti Counterfeiting and brand protection is a massive concern. Companies are looking to introduce new technologies to their products which are almost impossible to replicate. In order to do this they are focusing on nano technologies, labeling specialists, RFID and also asset tracking experts.”
Benjamin Trevett - Executive Director, NG Pharmaceutical Group

With the pharmaceutical industry heading into the well documented “expiry cliff” competition is rife. Quicker more cost effective methods of manufacturing must be found for big pharma to remain competitive and a clearer means of communication such as that seen at the NG Pharma Summit is clearly vital.