PAKISTANI SCIENTIST COMES UP WITH WORLD’S FIRST HANDY DEVICE FOR CHECKING DRUG QUALITY
You may find it surprising like I did that till date, there was no handy, easy-to-use method for checking the quality and potency of a drug in spite of all the medical advancement of this age. The health care individuals have to rely on bulky and complex lab procedures for checking drug quality, and these too are mostly unreliable, expensive and time consuming.
So, the device developed by a Pakistani biomedical engineer, Muhammad Hamid Zaman, is a major breakthrough in the of field of medicine. This device named “Pharmacheck”, which brings out results in a matter of minutes, is selected by Scientific American as one of the “World Changing ideas of 2013”.
Drug quality assurance in underdeveloped parts of the world is quite an issue, raising numerous health hazards. This innovatory device has quite a potential in Zaman’s own home country Pakistan, where the practice of counterfeit drugs results in SEVEN HUNDRED THOUSAND DEATHS A YEAR!!!
Due to poor efficiency of the regulatory authorities, hundreds of thousands of counterfeit drugs are freely being used. In such a scenario, Pharmachek’s creation is a wonderful news.
One of the most striking features about Pharmacheck is its ability to figure out the “dissolution rate” of the drug. This feature has never been this easily traceable before. The dissolution rate gives a measure of the time taken by the drug to get dissolved after consumption. It proves to be crucial for life saving since drugs with extremely fast action can prove to be a potential risk for patient’s life.
Pharmacheck is handy, about the size of a small brief case, and quite easy to use. A pill of the drug to be tested is dissolved in a little water and a solution provided with the kit is added to the solution. The testing individual can have an idea of the drug quality within minutes after this procedure.
According to Zaman, the device will be commercial available by the next year. Hope Zaman’s struggle is paid well through effective use of the device in resource-limited parts of the world.
You may find it surprising like I did that till date, there was no handy, easy-to-use method for checking the quality and potency of a drug in spite of all the medical advancement of this age. The health care individuals have to rely on bulky and complex lab procedures for checking drug quality, and these too are mostly unreliable, expensive and time consuming.
So, the device developed by a Pakistani biomedical engineer, Muhammad Hamid Zaman, is a major breakthrough in the of field of medicine. This device named “Pharmacheck”, which brings out results in a matter of minutes, is selected by Scientific American as one of the “World Changing ideas of 2013”.
Drug quality assurance in underdeveloped parts of the world is quite an issue, raising numerous health hazards. This innovatory device has quite a potential in Zaman’s own home country Pakistan, where the practice of counterfeit drugs results in SEVEN HUNDRED THOUSAND DEATHS A YEAR!!!
Due to poor efficiency of the regulatory authorities, hundreds of thousands of counterfeit drugs are freely being used. In such a scenario, Pharmachek’s creation is a wonderful news.
One of the most striking features about Pharmacheck is its ability to figure out the “dissolution rate” of the drug. This feature has never been this easily traceable before. The dissolution rate gives a measure of the time taken by the drug to get dissolved after consumption. It proves to be crucial for life saving since drugs with extremely fast action can prove to be a potential risk for patient’s life.
Pharmacheck is handy, about the size of a small brief case, and quite easy to use. A pill of the drug to be tested is dissolved in a little water and a solution provided with the kit is added to the solution. The testing individual can have an idea of the drug quality within minutes after this procedure.
According to Zaman, the device will be commercial available by the next year. Hope Zaman’s struggle is paid well through effective use of the device in resource-limited parts of the world.
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