During the recent CPhI Webinar Packaging & Drug Delivery Trends for 2022 sponsored by Portal Instruments, experts discussed the crucial factors to consider during the development process, such as digitalisation, sustainability and a shift towards self-administration.

Here are five key learning points from the webinar:

1. Uncertainty around impact of economic factors on healthcare spending

While the short-term impact from the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021 has been significant, the long-term impact on pharmaceutical growth trends has been more muted, according to Yasemin Bettina Karanis, Senior Consultant, IQVIA.

She said this includes estimates of higher spending on vaccines and lower spending on existing treatments due to disruptions from the pandemic.

“Looking ahead, the largest uncertainty will be the impact of economic factors on countries’ budgets for healthcare and medicines spending as a result of this,” she added.

2. Greater emphasis on home- and self-administration

While the long-term forecast may not have changed drastically, the dynamics and the launch environment have, said Karanis.

“The pandemic has to a certain extent influenced the types of launches that can demonstrate advantage and so looking ahead we see that home- and self-administrable therapies will take on new resonance,” she told the webinar.

3. Pharmaceutical packaging needs to transition from a linear to circular model

Moving towards a circular economy is challenge because it involves not only re-using packaging products but also extending their use and reusing and recycling them, said Lionel Jeannin, Associate Director Oral Packaging and Delivery Systems, Novartis.

“Instead of focusing on Design for Manufacturing, which is more of a linear model of thinking, the industry should be thinking about Design for Recycling,” he said. “To push the industry to that direction, EU and global packaging regulations are becoming more and more demanding. Be more prepared for this and be sure what your strategy is.”

4. Consumer tech and medtech are starting to converge and are creating new patient expectations

 With consumer-connected technology becoming so commonplace, it is expanding the value proposition of products, said Bart Burgess, Vice President of Strategy and Product Management, Portal Instruments.

“Obviously within healthcare, such as pumps for Type I diabetes for example, what we’re seeing is more and more integration of medtech,” he said. “So there’s an expectation among users that their medical devices will begin to integrate these things as well.”

5. Manufacturers modernising drug delivery to improve patient experience

With regard to injectable drug delivery systems, manufacturers are seeking now to modernise drug delivery by dramatically improving the patient experience and creating more sustainable drug delivery systems.

“What we’re seeing now is moving beyond just the ordinary disposable autoinjector and disposable prefilled syringe and thinking about how to get a reusable element which will be able to be exploited over a very large number of injections or multiple years even,” said Burgess.