The number of online pharmacies continues to increase exponentially and the global supply chain is at risk of infiltration by counterfeit ingredients. A more proactive approach is needed to ensure consumer safety.

As counterfeiters become more cunning and technologically advanced, spotting their handiwork is increasingly difficult. Can surface analysis techniques be used to outwit them?

How can any company be sure that the standards that suppliers might claim to operate, and might be able to demonstrate from time to time, are actually being practised all the time?

Drug products subjected to degradation because of environmental stresses can be salvaged if proper packaging and protection is provided by sorbents.

Manufacturing facilities must be inspected by members of regulatory bodies. However… these bodies are woefully inadequate at performing the task.

How much do you know about parallel trade? Perhaps you may have heard someone mention these words and have then switched off. In a sense, it's hardly surprising given the fact that most media coverage centres on interpretation of complex legal cases. By the time you reach the end of these types of articles, you can't work out what the mentioned companies were arguing about in the first place and on which technical details the case was judged. Yet, time after time, a legal ruling on a parallel trade issue rockets to the front pages of the pharmaceutical press and even, occasionally, the mainstream media.

Never has greater pressure been applied to pharmaceutical manufacturers. Shelf space competition for branded drugs has reached aggressive proportions and now even prescription drugs vie for pricing and delivery. Against this is a backdrop of ever-increasing downward price pressures, and a spectrum of progressively more stringent legislative and quality requirements. Finally, regional markets now demand different tamper evidence technology, anticounterfeiting measures and safeguards against interference by biological terrorists. Much of which points to the need for innovation in packaging — not just in terms of pack styles and sizes, but also cost.

Pharmaceutical manufacturers are under increasing pressure to shorten time-to-market, produce treatments with unpredictable product lifetimes, provide greater flexibility and, at the same time, comply with ever more stringent quality, validation, stability and traceability constraints. While this is encouraging for the contract manufacturing sector, it creates the need for even greater manufacturing flexibility.