Drug delivery via inhalers is today mostly restricted to the treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma. The British design company Team Consulting has developed an inhaler engine that might be used to deliver insulin, vaccines or drugs for pain relief.
David Harris, the technical leader of the Occuris project, told EMDT that the patent application for the technology is still pending, so he wouldn’t disclose any technical details.
He told us that there are two kinds of dry powder inhalers. “Passive inhalers are relatively cheap to produce but rely the patient’s inspiratory effort to deliver drug to the lungs. Active devices, on the other hand, are much more efficient because they use pneumatic, mechanical or piezoelectric mechanisms to disperse the drugs. But they are more complex and costly. It costs tens of Dollars to produce them,” he said.