In the future, health, individual medicine, pharmaceutical technology and digitization with artificial intelligence, big data and networking will form a symbiosis for the benefit of people and their well-being. In the future, digital technologies for individualization in medicine, health and care will play a decisive role in realizing care in suburban areas. Experts from the Applied Health Sciences research cluster and the Institute for Industrial Information Technology at the Ostwestfalen-Lippe University of Applied Sciences reported on the latest trends and concrete research results from the field of smart health sciences as part of the solutions-OWL event program "Digitization and AI: Key to the New Normal in OWL".
Professor Miriam Pein-Hackelbusch opened the evening at the CENTRUM INDUSTRIAL IT and presented her contribution on the topic of "meaningful pharmaceutical development" to the total of 15 participants. It was all about the five human senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. "When we hold a product in our hands, we judge it based on our senses. Some of these senses even trigger certain emotions in people. Marketing in particular takes advantage of the play with the senses and wants to increase purchasing power in this way," describes the professor, thus getting into the subject of smart health somewhat remotely at first glance. But: precisely on the basis of these five senses, she conducted research projects in the pharmaceutical field. One example is the taste testing of a new active ingredient. "Based on comparisons with real people, we were able to test the usability of an electronic tongue and determine that it can taste the active ingredient in different concentrations with the help of the sensors and is therefore usable," says Pein-Hackelbusch. The goal of her research: To use the different sensors (senses) together rather than individually for meaningful pharmaceutical development. And she also made this relevance clear with a simple example: "Only when they see a yellowish liquid do they not know what it is exactly. Only when they also taste and smell it, i.e., use several senses, do they know it's a beer."
The usability of a drug is rarely questioned because one is aware that it requires approval before it can be distributed. For this purpose, a pharmaceutical entrepreneur must submit documents proving the efficacy, safety and quality of the drug, for example through clinical studies. Professor Gerd Kutz addressed precisely this topic in his keynote presentation "Pharmaceutical production 4.0 - this is how it works". "Frequently, drug samples are measured and assessed only after the manufacturing process has been completed. This not only generates a longer working time, but also a large amount of drug waste," Kutz described. Therefore, he presented a modern process analysis called "PAT" to the plenum. This is "a system for developing, analyzing and controlling manufacturing processes through real-time measurement of critical quality and performance attributes." The advantage: the measurement of the sample can be performed directly, i.e. on-line, during the process and thus there is the possibility of reaction and intervention at any time. Kutz explained this process in detail using the example of melt granulation in an intensive mixer.
Professor Volker Lohweg addressed two topics at once in his speaking time: app-based PD conception and Covid-19 protection on surfaces.
In the future, doctors could prescribe not only tablets and other medications, but also health apps for mobile devices. "At the beginning of our research, we used the smartphone to do a gait analysis," Lohweg says, describing the beginnings. The background is that, according to researchers, Parkinson's disease can be detected by the patient's gait long before other signs of the disease appear. In the meantime, the app "PD Assist" has been developed, with the help of which the smartphone can be used as a measuring device. Hurdles, such as data protection, have now been solved, but it will still take some time before the app can really be "prescribed".
In the second part of his presentation, Professor Lohweg addressed the hygiene of banknotes. How dirty are they actually? "We now know that banknotes do not have a particularly high bacterial load. The load is comparable to table surfaces or similar, but by no means higher," answered Lohweg. Particularly in times of a Covid 19 pandemic, the contamination of surfaces with viruses is of course also of interest, and the "SL Protect" project is dedicated to this. SL Protect disinfects by means of UV-C radiation, which kills pathogens of various types and thus also inactivates viruses on banknotes. The principle can be easily integrated into existing systems such as cash registers, vending machines and in retail. "With SL Protect, we can make a contribution to keeping cash payments secure and worry-free. In this way, each of us can continue to make crisis-proof, anonymous and non-discriminatory payments in the future," summarizes Professor Lohweg impressively.
About the Institute for Industrial Information Technology (inIT):
The Institute for Industrial Information Technology (inIT) at the OWL University of Applied Sciences in Lemgo is one of the leading research institutions in the field of industrial information technology and currently employs more than 70 people.
At inIT, information and communication technologies (ICT) are harmonized with the high demands of automation technology. Industrial communication, industrial image processing and pattern recognition, distributed real-time software, computer intelligence and human-technology interaction form the institute's five areas of expertise. Research is conducted under the roof of the CENTRUM INDUSTRIAL IT (CIIT) research and development center on the Innovation Campus Lemgo. The inIT is one of the leading research institutions in the BMBF top cluster "Intelligent Technical Systems OstWestfalenLippe - it's OWL".
About Applied Health Sciences:
The research focus is an interdisciplinary competence center and research into the health sector. The content-related profiling in research, development and transfer is carried out in a strategy-guided manner, in particular with partners from the region, and is thereby linked to the range of courses offered in "Medical and Health Technology", "Pharmaceutical Technology", "Biotechnology" and "Technology of Cosmetics and Detergents". The integration of different competences and disciplines covers a large area of applied research. Extensive experience is available in the field of formulation, production and testing of products related to the health sector (cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, nanostructured materials). Emphasis is placed, for example, on the development of process analytical methods for the investigation and characterization of drugs or the production of biologics using the latest bioprocess technology methods. Research naturally also covers ensuring the microbiological safety of products, in particular the development and validation of microbiological detection methods ("rapid testing") and measures to maintain the necessary hygiene.