The medical industry is getting prepared for the COVID-19 vaccination. Recently, Pfizer and BioNTech have jointly developed a vaccine and submitted an application for emergency use authorization to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

According to Moncef Slaoui, chief scientific adviser for US Government’s Operation Warp Speed program, the vaccine shall be delivered since December 11. The governments of several European countries have also indicated that they will start providing vaccines in December or January 2021.

The COVID-19 vaccination will be available soon. (Source: ApiJect)

Meanwhile, enterprises across the medical supply chain have been accelerating the manufacturing of hundreds of millions of medical consumables and devices, such as needles and syringes, to support the coming global vaccination. 

Injection device supplier works around the clock

The US government has placed orders for 286 million needles and syringes from Becton, Dickinson and Company (BD), one of the largest injection device suppliers in the US, with 256 million to be supplied by January 2021. In addition, BD is striving to provide the world with a billion injection devices by the end of next year.

Thus, BD manufacturing teams have been working around the clock to manufacture highly calibrated and sophisticated medication delivery devices. The company has shared the manufacturing processes of needles and syringes on its official blog and website.

Manufacturing process of BD for medication delivery devices.

First, plastic pellets called resin are heated, melted and injected into molds to create the plastic parts that make up a syringe like the barrel and plunger rod. The plastic parts of a needle including the hub and shield are made the same way.

The needle is created using stainless steel strip that is rolled into a tube and welded. A metalworking process called drawing is then used to shrink the tube until it gets to the proper wall thickness and gauge (the outer diameter measurement), and then cut to length. These blunt metal tubes called cannula then go through a grinding process to form the sharpened point, used to penetrate the skin when delivering the vaccine.

Then, the components for the needle like cannula, hub and shield and for the syringe like barrel, plunger rod and stopper, are respectively fed into high-speed assembly machines and the final products enter packaging machines.

The individual units are placed into case cartons that are sterilized on site, stacked onto pallets and loaded on trucks. Along the way, BD quality engineers review each step of the process to ensure products are safe and meet stringent quality inspections and specifications.

New digital automation technology for syringe manufacturing 

ATS Automation Tooling Systems Inc., an industry-leading automation solutions provider, has received a US$20 million order booking from a medical device manufacturer to design, build, and deliver several automated safety syringe manufacturing systems that will feature the Company’s new, high-performance Symphoni technology.

Symphoni technology is an innovative, high-performance, digital assembly solution.

The program will be completed over the next 10 months and will enable the production of safety syringes to meet potential demand related to COVID-19 vaccine production.

This effort is critical to meet anticipated demand as existing supplies are consumed in routine healthcare and to treat the surge of COVID-19 patients. Symphoni technology is suitable for urgent, time-sensitive programs because its standardized, modular construction lends itself to rapid deployment and scalable replication.

The patented technology is an innovative, high-performance digital manufacturing technology that multiplies the productivity of automated assembly processes by eliminating non-value-added production time.

Symphoni’s disruptive combination of high-speed, high-precision, and configurable flexibility heralds a revolution in automated assembly. It meets the manufacturing demands of high-volume consumables such as syringes because it assembles them at high rates in a compact footprint while assuring compliance to the medical device industry’s rigid quality standards. 

Gigafactory to be constructed for packaging vaccines

ApiJect Systems Corp. has been approved by the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) for a US$590 million loan to construct a multi-facility campus enabling the US to more quickly package high volumes of injectable medicines and vaccines in the event of a national emergency, beginning with COVID-19.

Prefilled injectors.

Located in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, a one million sq ft campus will be home to the ApiJect Gigafactory, featuring the world’s largest pharmaceutical fill-finish facility, capable of producing annually up to 3 billion single-dose prefilled injectors.

This new facility brings together the well-established aseptic drug packaging technology known as Blow-Fill-Seal (BFS) with ApiJect’s proprietary pen needle-style hubs to package drugs reliably and safely in BFS prefilled injectors. BFS uses pharmaceutical-grade plastic resin to create, fill and seal a strip of 12-25 drug containers per production line every three seconds in a single, highly efficient process.

The concept of ApiJect's new Gigafactory.

The Gigafactory will be Biosafety Level 2 (BSL-2) capable and support vaccine candidates that require standard cold storage or ultra-cold storage down to -70 degrees Celsius. Each manufacturing line will be isolated, allowing for up to 15 different drugs to be packaged simultaneously.

Apart from its BFS production lines, the ApiJect campus will house two separate special-purpose drug manufacturing facilities to handle drugs such as the next generation of antibiotics and cytotoxic drugs, plus an onsite needle and cannula factory to ensure a domestic supply of this important medical supply chain item.

(Source: Becton, Dickinson and Company, ATS Automation Tooling Systems Inc. and ApiJect Systems Corp.)

The medical industry is getting prepared for the COVID-19 vaccination. Recently, Pfizer and BioNTech have jointly developed a vaccine and submitted an application for emergency use authorization to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

According to Moncef Slaoui, chief scientific adviser for US Government’s Operation Warp Speed program, the vaccine shall be delivered since December 11. The governments of several European countries have also indicated that they will start providing vaccines in December or January 2021.

The COVID-19 vaccination will be available soon. (Source: ApiJect)

Meanwhile, enterprises across the medical supply chain have been accelerating the manufacturing of hundreds of millions of medical consumables and devices, such as needles and syringes, to support the coming global vaccination. 

Injection device supplier works around the clock

The US government has placed orders for 286 million needles and syringes from Becton, Dickinson and Company (BD), one of the largest injection device suppliers in the US, with 256 million to be supplied by January 2021. In addition, BD is striving to provide the world with a billion injection devices by the end of next year.

Thus, BD manufacturing teams have been working around the clock to manufacture highly calibrated and sophisticated medication delivery devices. The company has shared the manufacturing processes of needles and syringes on its official blog and website.

Manufacturing process of BD for medication delivery devices.

First, plastic pellets called resin are heated, melted and injected into molds to create the plastic parts that make up a syringe like the barrel and plunger rod. The plastic parts of a needle including the hub and shield are made the same way.

The needle is created using stainless steel strip that is rolled into a tube and welded. A metalworking process called drawing is then used to shrink the tube until it gets to the proper wall thickness and gauge (the outer diameter measurement), and then cut to length. These blunt metal tubes called cannula then go through a grinding process to form the sharpened point, used to penetrate the skin when delivering the vaccine.

Then, the components for the needle like cannula, hub and shield and for the syringe like barrel, plunger rod and stopper, are respectively fed into high-speed assembly machines and the final products enter packaging machines.

The individual units are placed into case cartons that are sterilized on site, stacked onto pallets and loaded on trucks. Along the way, BD quality engineers review each step of the process to ensure products are safe and meet stringent quality inspections and specifications.

New digital automation technology for syringe manufacturing 

ATS Automation Tooling Systems Inc., an industry-leading automation solutions provider, has received a US$20 million order booking from a medical device manufacturer to design, build, and deliver several automated safety syringe manufacturing systems that will feature the Company’s new, high-performance Symphoni technology.

Symphoni technology is an innovative, high-performance, digital assembly solution.

The program will be completed over the next 10 months and will enable the production of safety syringes to meet potential demand related to COVID-19 vaccine production.

This effort is critical to meet anticipated demand as existing supplies are consumed in routine healthcare and to treat the surge of COVID-19 patients. Symphoni technology is suitable for urgent, time-sensitive programs because its standardized, modular construction lends itself to rapid deployment and scalable replication.

The patented technology is an innovative, high-performance digital manufacturing technology that multiplies the productivity of automated assembly processes by eliminating non-value-added production time.

Symphoni’s disruptive combination of high-speed, high-precision, and configurable flexibility heralds a revolution in automated assembly. It meets the manufacturing demands of high-volume consumables such as syringes because it assembles them at high rates in a compact footprint while assuring compliance to the medical device industry’s rigid quality standards. 

Gigafactory to be constructed for packaging vaccines

ApiJect Systems Corp. has been approved by the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) for a US$590 million loan to construct a multi-facility campus enabling the US to more quickly package high volumes of injectable medicines and vaccines in the event of a national emergency, beginning with COVID-19.

Prefilled injectors.

Located in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, a one million sq ft campus will be home to the ApiJect Gigafactory, featuring the world’s largest pharmaceutical fill-finish facility, capable of producing annually up to 3 billion single-dose prefilled injectors.

This new facility brings together the well-established aseptic drug packaging technology known as Blow-Fill-Seal (BFS) with ApiJect’s proprietary pen needle-style hubs to package drugs reliably and safely in BFS prefilled injectors. BFS uses pharmaceutical-grade plastic resin to create, fill and seal a strip of 12-25 drug containers per production line every three seconds in a single, highly efficient process.

The concept of ApiJect's new Gigafactory.

The Gigafactory will be Biosafety Level 2 (BSL-2) capable and support vaccine candidates that require standard cold storage or ultra-cold storage down to -70 degrees Celsius. Each manufacturing line will be isolated, allowing for up to 15 different drugs to be packaged simultaneously.

Apart from its BFS production lines, the ApiJect campus will house two separate special-purpose drug manufacturing facilities to handle drugs such as the next generation of antibiotics and cytotoxic drugs, plus an onsite needle and cannula factory to ensure a domestic supply of this important medical supply chain item.

(Source: Becton, Dickinson and Company, ATS Automation Tooling Systems Inc. and ApiJect Systems Corp.)