Perspectives of Printing Technologies in Continuous Drug Manufacturing

This chapter discusses and gives future perspectives of the use of printing technologies in the manufacture of drugs. It describes the following techniques: inkjet printing (drop deposition); flexographic printing; and fused filament deposition. The promising advancements in printing technologies support dose personalization development in the pharmaceutical industry and can contribute to attractive options for continuous manufacturing. Reliable and robust methods for the quality control of created formulations are needed if printing becomes a viable option in point of care applications. Most application examples in the chapter deal with desktop flexography and research-scale inkjet models that are available for drug delivery system prototype fabrication for accurate dosing, multi-dosing, and material deposition in general. Due to the varying nature of inks and the complexity in the structures to be produced, single printing methods cannot meet all the needs required in fabricating complex multilayer and composite (multi-component) structures.