A pill printed by the 3D printer at UCLan

A revolutionary new way to deliver medicine has been developed at a Preston university.

The University of Central Lancashire has seen a 3D printer create a tablet of medicine.

Advertisements

The printer, housed in the School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, replicated drugs available in pharmacies and hospitals.

Producing tablets for individual patients costs the NHS more than £11 million, based on March 2011 prices.

A video produced by the university shows the 3D printer in action, if you’re on our app click here to watch.

Dr Mohamed Albed Alhnan and his team have developed a drug-polymer filament system that replaces the standard filaments in a 3D printer.

He said: “3-D printing has been embraced by lots of different industries but we have shown how this technology can be harnessed to improve medical care, providing low-cost, personally tailored medicines for patients.

“Thanks to this technology, the invented system can provide medical institutions with a new option and maintain dosage form properties while accurately adjusting the dose with simple software order, something that was considered before to be costly and required experienced staff and dedicated facilities. Eventually, we hope to see that units can be kept at home for patients who continuously need to change their daily dose.”

UCLan is predicting the technique could be used by pharmaceutical firms and hospitals within five years and by the public within a decade.

What do you think? Would you ever want to print your prescription? Let us know in the comments below