A combination of digital tools, improved production equipment, and advanced instrumentation helped COVID-19 vaccines to roll out in record time. Ben Arriola and Zach Blum, Emerson There is little doubt that researchers will study the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects from countless angles in the decades to come. Few events in modern times have had…

Emergent BioSolutions was not prepared to take on the mammoth task of churning out millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses to support U.S. efforts to end the pandemic, according to a report published today in The New York Times. Emergent was ill-equipped despite a $163 million federal contract to prepare the facility for high-volume production, according…

The pharmaceutical industry is warming to the concept of smart manufacturing — and predictive maintenance in particular. The reason for that trend is partly financial. A single hour of downtime can potentially cost millions of dollars in lost productivity, and predictive maintenance promises to make maintenance more efficient and effective. One traditional barrier to predictive…

Human Factors + (HF+) is a natural extension of Noble’s deep understanding of the patient experience relative to self-administering drug therapies By Tim McLeroy, Executive Director of Marketing & Patient Services The global market for medical devices is approximately $436 billion, bolstered by an aging population, according to data from hfMEDIC, the University of Utah-led…

Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) announced that it assumed full responsibility for the production of its COVID-19 vaccine at the Emergent BioSolutions Bayview (Baltimore) facility. The company’s announcement comes days after news broke that a factory error made at that facility resulted in 15 million discarded COVID-19 vaccines. New Brunswick, N.J.–based J&J’s single-dose vaccine was authorized…

A former FDA inspector accused the agency of downplaying safety problems at a Merck plant tapped to manufacture Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine.  The whistleblower alleged that a 2018 inspection uncovered evidence that employees in the facility in Durham, N.C. engaged in a host of unsanitary practices. A letter to President Biden from the U.S.…

Employees at an Emergent BioSolutions (NYSE:EBS) facility in Baltimore made a mistake several weeks ago when formulating the ingredients for Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine, requiring 15 million doses of it to be discarded. A quality control process revealed that one batch of a drug substance for the J&J COVID-19 vaccine “did not meet quality…

Sanofi announced today that it will spend €600 million ($685 million) on a new plant in Toronto to produce its differentiated influenza vaccines. The Paris-based pharma giant’s Fluzone high-dose quadrivalent influenza vaccine has four times more antigen than a standard-dose vaccine. The vaccine’s creators specifically designed it to provide superior protection against influenza for older…

Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) announced today that it has entered into an agreement with the African Vaccine Acquisition Trust (AVAT)  to make 220 million COVID-19 vaccine doses available to the 55 African Union member countries. AVAT also has the potential to order an additional 180 million doses to bring the total to 440 million through…

The spread of SARS-CoV-2 variants has convinced the U.S. government to stop using Lilly’s COVID-19 monoclonal antibody therapy bamlanivimab when used alone. The U.S. government will continue using bamlanivimab when paired with etesevimab, another monoclonal antibody. The government pointed to the rising number of SARS-CoV-2 variants across the country as the reasoning behind the decision.…