#innovation #estonia #personalisation
Imagine you have a medicine available only as a 100 mg tablet 💊 , but it needs to be administered to various people, from newborns to elderly individuals with poor kidney function. Some need just 4 mg, while others require 170 mg. How do we manage this? Is it feasible to accurately divide a tablet into 25 equal parts and give those tiny bits to a child? This is a global challenge, and many people are working to find solutions. Important regulatory measures have been introduced, and while the situation is gradually improving, personalisation of doses remains difficult in many cases. So, what do you do as a healthcare professional when the suitable formulation does not exist or is unavailable in your country? You innovate!
Last Monday, while on holiday in beautiful Estonia, I had the opportunity to visit my dear colleague Dr. Jana Lass at Tartu University Hospital. She demonstrated a relatively simple technology they now use clinically to create drug-loaded, tasty jelly drops tailored to specific patients. Essentially, you mix the active ingredient with a jelly base, place it into a syringe, set it into a machine, and let it drop the jelly into a sealable plastic tray, like a pill blister. This allows for the creation of individual "pills" with precise amounts of the drug, providing fantastic flexibility. They started with one medicine a few months ago and now have 16, all approved by the national regulator.
There exist various and may be better technologies for such personalisation, and this is not to endorse the use of any of them. They certainly do not replace the broader European and global efforts to improve the availability of flexible formulations. However, this Estonian example is, for me, a great case of real innovation in a small but agile country: identifying a problem, searching for a solution, trying different approaches, and achieving results. Little buzz, a lot of benefit for patients.
