Cost pressures, pharmaceutical

The precious metals are many times the cost of the base metals and, therefore, are limited to specialized applications or to those in which process conditions are highly demanding (e.g., where conditions are too corrosive for base metals and temperatures too high for plastics where base metal contamination must be avoided, as in the food and pharmaceutical industries or where plastics cannot be used because of heat transfer requirements and for special applications such as bursting discs in pressure vessels). The physical and mechanical properties of precious metals and their alloys used in process plants are given in Table 3.38. 

We know, from consulting to a wide range of pharmaceutical and biotech R D groups, that managements are under strong pressure to achieve a breakthrough in their own company performance and, collectively, in industry performance. Ultimately this must be quantified as the long-run ratio between the value created by new products and the costs of R D. 

Dissolution is becoming one of the most commonly automated functions in the modern pharmaceutical development and quality assurance (QA) laboratory. To the experienced dissolution analyst the reasons seem obvious. Dissolution methods are time-consuming and require a significant amount of labor. Beyond the cost of labor, the true cost of increased regulatory requirements and documentation can be better managed through automation. Additionally, the increased pressure to... 

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