Every year on November 14, World Diabetes Day turns attention to the people living with diabetes and the treatments they depend on. For most of them, that treatment is a tablet taken every day, whether it is the 1st line therapy metformin, a long-established option like glimepiride, or a newer therapy such as sitagliptin, empagliflozin or oral semaglutide. This makes oral solid dosage (OSD) manufacturing one of the most important links in diabetes care.

Why continuous manufacturing matters for essential oral antidiabetic drugs?
Oral antidiabetic drugs are essential medicines. Patients need them daily, often for life, and health systems need them in large volumes at a price people can afford. Traditional manufacturing can struggle to keep pace with that kind of demand.

Continuous manufacturing helps close the gap in four ways:
• Reliable supply: Tablets move through production without stopping, so manufacturers can respond faster to rising demand and reduce the risk of shortages.
• Consistent quality: Every tablet is processed under the same conditions, which reduces variation from one tablet to the next.
• Uniform dosing through uniform coating: An even coat on every tablet supports accurate, repeatable dosing and protects the active ingredient, so patients get the same result from each tablet they take.
• Lower cost per tablet: Higher throughput and less downtime help keep essential medicines affordable.
• Easier scale-up: A process developed at small scale can be carried into full production without being redesigned.

O’Hara holds the patent for continuous manufacturing
O’Hara Technologies has built tablet coating equipment for pharmaceutical manufacturers since 1976. Coating is the final step before a tablet reaches the patient, and our continuous coating technology is designed & patented for the volume and consistency that oral antidiabetic production requires. On World Diabetes Day, we recognize the manufacturers who make these medicines and the role that dependable OSD production plays in getting them to patients.

Get the Full Story in the Coating Digest
Our World Diabetes Day edition of Coating Digest covers this topic in depth: where diabetes treatment is heading, what that means for the oral antidiabetic market, and how manufacturers are preparing their tablet lines. The full edition is available to subscribers only.
To follow recent OSD innovation and stay relevant in a fast-moving industry, subscribe to Coating Digest and get each edition delivered to your inbox.

Subscribe to Coating Digest