All Your Prescriptions Can Be Combined In One Pill With This 3D Printing Service

Multiply Labs, a company specializing in personalized pharmaceutical products envisions a future where patients do not have to swallow a combination of different pills placed in plastic pill divider case.

In a Medium post by Fred Parietti, the company’s CEO, the promise of the startup is a single “daily capsule tailored around the needs of each patient” which will be 3D-printed.

Following prescriptions could be challenging sometimes, especially when you have to take multiple pills. In different cases, a certain drug’ exact dosage doesn’t even exist, so the doctors need to prescribe two pills to make up for that needed dosage. Or there are scenarios where a single pill’s smaller dose isn’t available.

The specially manufactured pill of Multiply Labs has several compartments, each of a specific prescribed drug based on the prescription of a patient. By alternating the wall’s thickness of the compartments, the releasing and dissolving of the drugs can happen at the exact right time.

And with 3D printing, these pills’ mass manufacturing is absolutely possible.

With traditional mass-manufacturing machinery, it is impossible to produce personalized single-capsule pill. The only possible way is to deploy cutting-edge robotic technology.

The manufacturing process of Multiply Labs is run entirely by robots. The order, in this case, a personalized prescription, is sent to the system. Within minutes, the system will form that unique capsules. The process consists of two different steps: capsule forming and capsule filling.

Parietti wrote:

The idea of the smart pill will be presented at two major pharma manufacturing conferences which will be held later this year.