Congratulations to the Winners of the 2023 Drug Delivery Innovation Awards!
The 2023 PDA Drug Delivery Innovation Awards winners were announced on October 17th during the opening plenary session
of the 2023 PDA Universe of Pre-Filled Syringes (PFS) and Injection Devices Conference in Gothenburg, Sweden. The PDA Drug Delivery Innovation Awards were created in 2019 to recognize technical innovations advancing the field of
bio/pharmaceutical manufacturing.
The Innovation Award recognizes a new device, manufacturing process, method, or automation that brings value to the industry. This year’s Innovation Award was presented to Merck KGaA for the digital platform for enhanced adherence tracking.
The innovation is a secure and scalable ecosystem helping to monitor real-time data received from auto-injectors. The devices send information to a centralized repository to give doctors better access to auto-injector data, which, in turn, dispatches data to a healthcare professional web platform and patients and their caregivers via a mobile app. Doctors and patients rely on those visuals to track whether they are making progress in the patient’s medical condition. The system aims to address the most important pain points in the journey of patients, their caregivers, and healthcare professionals without becoming intrusive.
Here are the winners of the 2023 PDA Drug Delivery Innovation Awards
The Partnership Innovation Award recognizes achievement in partnering to successfully launch or introduce a new product to the market or modifying an existing product to make it significantly better or scalable. This year’s Partnership Innovation Award winners are the Stevanato Group, Bayer US LLC, and Vetter Pharma-Fertigung for the innovation of enhanced diluent PFS for reconstitution and administration of a lyophilized biologic. This partnership innovation involved the close collaboration of the development groups of three parties: the glass barrel manufacturer (Stevanato), the diluent PFS manufacturer (Vetter), and the combination product manufacturer (Bayer).
The goals of this partnership were to solve a potential compatibility issue with the diluent PFS and biologic drug product and reduce the gliding forces of the diluent PFS during drug product reconstitution. In addition, this collaboration highlights the benefits of bringing together stakeholders with their process expertise to solve a complex issue with a combination product that benefits each stakeholder. This is the second year in a row that the Stevanato Group was awarded the Drug Delivery Innovation Award in the Partnership Innovation Category.
“The companies recognized for the 2023 PDA Drug Delivery Innovation Awards are well deserving of this honor, and I congratulate them for their achievements and tireless efforts to move the industry forward,” said PDA President and CEO Glenn Wright. “They, and all the companies that were considered for these awards, presented technology innovations that will certainly benefit patients worldwide, and for that, we are grateful.”