Military-certified EP-IR technology for use in quality control
launched into a market valued at $1.6 billion, has been granted a
new US patent.
A US-based provider of analysers to original equipment manufacturers, Aspectrics, said it now has eight patents on its encoded photometric infrared spectroscopy (EP-IR) disk technology, which it says is gaining use among pharmaceutical companies on the back of the Process Analytical Technology (PAT) initiative in the US.
According to the company, PAT has increased the demand for industrial infrared spectroscopy analysers and applications in pharmaceutical quality control.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is actively urging the pharmaceutical industry to embrace PAT in an attempt to modernise publishing guidelines for PAT as part of its 21st Century Initiative.
The concept of continuous as opposed to batch processing is starting to become more widespread in the pharmaceutical industry as PAT gains in popularity amongst drug manufactures, which are constantly looking for ways to improve processing efficiencies and costs.
One application for EP-IR is in the analysis of pharmaceutical tablets, evaluating composition and authenticity. The technology collects data at high speed 'ultrasonic range' and at 128 wavelengths bins, allowing for analysis of complex chemical systems in real time, according to Aspectrics.
"We feel that our EP-IR has the potential to both replace FT-IR and NIR instrumentation for many process monitoring applications as well as create new markets inaccessible to FT-IR and NIR," Celine Callender, spokesperson for Aspectrics, told In-PharmaTechnologist.com.
"The inherent stability, ultra-fast scan speed and ruggedness of the EP-IR encoder disk technology makes it an ideal candidate for the harsh on-line process monitoring industry where the vibration prone environment affects the performance of both FT-IR and FT-NIR systems."
The company recently achieved military certification for vibration resistance, proving that the analytical instrument can withstand factory noise and vibrations.
Aspectrics first introduced the EP-IR MCA5000 analyser at the Pittcon exhibition and conference in 2006.
"We are delighted to have received our sixth US patent. The development of a strong patent position will enable us to have proprietary control of EP-IR technology, which is set to become an industry standard," said Jim Yano, VP of marketing for Aspectrics.
