(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- The Vitae Industries AutoCompounder is a 2'x2'x2' 3D printer that makes pills and gummies for neighborhood pharmacists in a third of the time required to fill gel capsules by hand.
Innovators
- Jeanine Sinanan-Singh and Daniel DeCiccio
- Ages: 25 and 26
- Chief executive officer and chief technology officer of Vitae Industries Inc., a five-employee startup in Providence
Origin
Sinanan-Singh and DeCiccio, high school friends from the Orlando area, began developing the AutoCompounder in 2014 after earning degrees in computer science and biomedical engineering from Harvard and Brown, respectively.
Use
Conventional industrial-size compounders, which can personalize medicines and dosages for individual patients, are too pricey for most pharmacies.
1. Load
A pharmacist mixes medicine with Vitae’s proprietary polymer and fills the AutoCompounder’s single disposable cartridge with the resulting compound.
2. Print
Then she selects the desired quantity of tablets or gummies and the correct dosage for a patient’s prescription and presses “print.” The process takes about 10 minutes.
Funding
The company has raised about $2 million from BoxGroup, Techstars, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, and others.
Price
Vitae plans to sell its printers for $5,000 and charge an as-yet-undetermined monthly subscription fee for software updates and maintenance.
Next Steps
Vitae is fine-tuning its printer with a handful of pharmacists in advance of mass production next year. David Hughes, one of the testers, says that besides saving pharmacists time, the AutoCompounder could ease the creation of a poly-pill, combining the needed doses of several medications into one tablet.
To contact the author of this story: Michael Belfiore in New York at michael@michaelbelfiore.com.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jeff Muskus at jmuskus@bloomberg.net.
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