When it comes to manufacturing drugs, they do make them like they used to. An April report from the Food and Drug Administration stated that today’s plants differ very little from those in the 1960s.
Bernhardt Trout would like to change that. The director of the Novartis-MIT Center for Continuous Manufacturing is a leading advocate for a more automated, flexible drug production process that allows quality checks (and changes) on the fly. The industry standard batch-based system is hindered by stops and starts, requiring, in some cases, multiple plants for each component of a drug. That approach can lead to delays, and potentially more expensive medicines at the pharmacy.
