NIR: In-Depth Focus 2014

• Moving towards continuous manufacturing with NIRS and NIR-CI systems
  José Manuel Amigo, Department of Food Science, University of Copenhagen / Milad Rouhi Khorasani and Jukka Rantanen, Department of Pharmacy, University of Copenhagen / Poul Bertelsen, Tekada Pharma A/S
  In the past, the pharmaceutical industries have been applying batch processing during manufacturing of pharmaceutical products because it serves well to the industry and the regulatory agencies. Conventional pharmaceutical manufacturing is generally accomplished using batch processing together with time-consuming off-line laboratory measurements, conducted on many randomly collected samples to evaluate quality attributes.The principle of batch processing is profound quality control of the intermediate-product and the final product after each unit operation.
• Monitoring of pharmaceutical powder mixing by NIR spectroscopy
  Lizbeth Martinez, Novartis Switzerland
  Powder mixing is a central and extremely important unit operation that is practiced to a great extent whenever particulate material is processed. In the pharmaceutical industry, blending is involved in the manufacture of solid dosage forms, which include tablets, capsules, and granules. Therefore, powder blending cannot be overlooked and a correct control strategy is fundamental. One of the technologies that has attracted a lot of attention from the pharmaceutical industries as well as the health authorities is near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy. NIR spectroscopy can measure bulk samples without any preceding treatment, thus making it a very appealing technology for the real- time monitoring of pharmaceutical processes.