Smart spray

For asthma patients, GlaxoSmithKline's Advair Diskus disc ejector must be a fresh air. It must have moved the judges of the Dupond Award and awarded them with a non-food gold medal.

In April 2001, giants of the international pharmaceutical industry introduced dry powder inhalation devices in the United States. It means replacing the standard spray brake. Since its launch, GSK said that at least 20 million prescriptions for Advair Diskus have been issued.

Although GSK said that Diskus can be used in other medical products in the future, the company currently uses Diskus for its Sevevent Diskus powder.

Unlike some spray devices, the patient does not need to take a metered inhaler to align his or her mouth, press on the bottle while inhaling the appropriate amount. There is no divider. To inject drugs, the patient can actuate a rod. This caused the covered material to peel away from the foam strip's substrate, exposing the powder-filled bubbles in the Advair Diskus device. Then, inhale the product through a branch and access nozzle assembly.

Advair Diskus also has a metering feature that counts up to zero and lets users know how much drug remains in the package.

In all, this device consists of 14 Bespak injection molded parts of ethylene, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, polycarbonate and polyoxymethylene. Bespak automatically pre-assembles 11 of them and assembles them into main components. GSK assembles the remaining 3 pieces of body top, mouthpiece and housing. Sortimat has developed new, automated assembly equipment for GSK and Bespak.

GSK mixes powdered medicines and fills them into foaming strips and loads them into the device. 28 samples are used for the sample and 60 for commercial sales. The filled strip is cut to length, rolled up, and then GSK inserts it into the device during assembly. A roll is formed at one end of the strip and a recess is formed at the other end to ensure that it is in the device. In Diskus, the rolled strips remain in the branch. The top of the body is covered with a filled part. The mouthpiece and shell used to inhale the drug is the final assembly.

The formed roll of foamed strip containing the powdered medicament is cold formed. From the outside, this forming roll consists of a nylon/laminate adhesive/laminate primer/aluminum foil/laminate adhesive/polyvinyl chloride. The total thickness is about 170mm. Base foil material is supplied by Alcan.

Alcan also supplies covered coils. Materials about 100 mm from the outside, including bleached, calendered, sulfuric acid treated paper/laminate adhesive/biaxially oriented polyester/laminate adhesive/aluminium foil/heat seal lacquer.

For further protection, Diskus is packed in hermetically sealed bags including polyester/low density polyethylene binder/softened and tempered aluminum foil/ethylene butyl acrylate maleic acid terpolymer hydrogenated terpolymer/low density polyethylene bonded Agent/low density polyethylene.