Fabrication of printed drug-delivery systems

Abstract

Printing technologies specifically digital inkjet printing, offer possibilities in the production of individualized medicines. The main advantage of inkjet printing includes the ability to dispense uniform droplets in the picoliter range with high degree of accuracy to allow dose personalization. The pharmaceutical ink formulation has to be designed with respect to its viscosity and surface tension to guarantee continuous printing and high reproducibility of the forming droplets to allow dose uniformity. The aim of this paper is demonstrate the combined use of inkjet and flexographic printing to fabricate pharmaceutical solid dosage forms with controlled release properties of drug substances. Also the characterization of substrates and final drug-delivery systems is studied with various techniques and discussed. ©2013; Society for Imaging Science and Technology.