Open Innovation to Help Sick Children
Global biopharmaceutical company Pfizer want your help to improve the health of children around the world.
It has launched an open innovation competition, along with the Institute of Pediatric Innovation (IPI) to source ideas for a package and dispensing device that will make it easier to dispense medicine to children.
The Open Innovation Device Challenge is seeking an innovation to help counter some of the problems of giving medicines orally to children.
Many are available in liquid form with sugars and sweeteners to mask the taste of the active ingredient. While these work well, they sometimes need to be refrigerated and require access to potable water. This can be problematic in less developed parts of the world.
Solid tablets can be an answer, but children often find them difficult to swallow. So doctors have to crush pills to make them go down easier, but this can result in inaccurate dosage.
Working with Pfizer
Multiparticulates, which could be beads or microspheres are a viable alternative. The contest’s winning innovation will build on a platform developed by Pfizer that is based on “a technology for formulating oral multiparticulate medicines into a tasteless, stable, dispersible powder that can be readily mixed with liquids or foods.”
The winning team will retain all intellectual property related to any inventive aspects of the package and dispensing device, and will receive seed money to work on its development.
For more information, and to take part in the open innovation challenge, click here.
The winning team will be announced in August 2016.
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