Exploring Manipulated Prescribed Medicines for Novel Leads in 3D Printed Personalized Dosage Forms

Background: On-demand personalized drug production is currently not addressed with large-scale drug manufacturing. In our study, we focused primarily on identifying possible active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) for 3D Printing (3DP) in the current healthcare setting. Methods: We conducted a retrospective cross-sectional study in the Netherlands using three different sources; community pharmacies (n = 5), elderly care homes (n = 3), and the Erasmus MC Sophia Children's Hospital. The primary endpoint was the percentage of prescriptions of medication manipulated before administration, thereby being a candidate for 3DP. Around a million prescriptions were analyzed in our study. Results: This study shows that around 3.0% of the prescribed drugs dispensed by Dutch community pharmacies were manipulated before administration, while around 10.5% of the prescribed drugs in the Erasmus MC Sophia Children's Hospital were manipulated prior to administration. Conclusions: With our study, we show that the most manipulated drugs come from the groups of constipation, psychopharmaceutical, cardiovascular, and anti-infectant drugs. Successful introduction of a compounded API drug by 3DP does not only rely on the API, but it also comes with an optimal balance between technical, economic as well as societal impact factors. Our study gives direction for potential future research on the introduction of 3DP of medicine in the healthcare setting.