Taking a long list of prescription pills on a daily basis can be a drag. But when there are certain medical requirements that need to be met, there is no avoiding the number of pills your doctor prescribes. Sometimes, if the condition is really serious, this number might be so high and confusing that it just becomes a task remembering all of the individual pills that need to be taken. So, to provide a solution to this predicament, a US based company called Multiply labs devised a way to help make custom pills that can combine all your prescription pills into one. How you ask? Let’s take a look. 

The company first and foremost, understands that no two patients are the same. With this philosophy, the company aimed to break the cycle of mass producing one size fits all type of pills. To tackle this problem, the team at Multiply labs came up with a simple, elegant, yet effective solution. Their approach involved the creation of a single, customised daily capsule that was made according to the requirements of the patient. 

Apart from the convenience, an additional advantage of this strategy is that customers wouldn’t have to stick to capsules made with fixed doses. By tailoring the dosage according to the patients’ needs, they can avoid any possible side effects that could be caused due to under or over dosage. For example, a patient wouldn’t have to buy a 100 or 150 mg pill when his requirement may actually be 123 mg; with Multiply Lab’s method they can have the pills custom made for them enabling them to consume these pills at the exact dosage that was prescribed by the doctor.

Although this sounds very promising, it still does not answer how such custom pills can be mass made at affordable costs. Well, for this, the company turned towards the power of robotics. By following a stepwise procedure wherein the capsule is formed first and then filled with medicine, the robots can accurately manufacture these capsules at rapid speeds. 

In terms of the actual design, Multi lab’s capsules are a whole lot different compared to regular capsules. According to the doctor’s prescription, they are made to have multiple compartments that can store any number of necessary drugs. Moreover, by modifying the thickness of the compartments’ walls, the time at which a drug is released can also be controlled. This is because, the dissolvability of the walls changes depending on its thickness and can therefore be used to release a drug faster or slower compared to the other ones contained in the capsule. 

Clearly, Multiply labs’ idea sounds very promising. With all the benefits that a customised single capsule system has to offer, the possibility of this idea taking off is very likely. Moreover, with Multiply labs’ increasing partnerships with large pharmaceutical companies, the commercialisation of this product is also imminent. And as the company expands, there is no doubt that it will help make the lives of thousands of people around the world much easier.