A good summary of trends in parenteral drug packaging appears in the March issue of Phamarceutical and Medical Device Packaging News.  The piece, titled, Prefill Revolution: A Market Segment on the Rise, discusses the primary drivers of adopting prefill syringe packaging, including:

1.  Minimizes contamination risk.  Traditional vial packaging introduces contamination risk each time a new dose is drawn up.

2.  Less waste: Traditional vials are overfilled by 20-24%.

3.  Smaller capital investment: By moving to prefilled syringes, manufacturers and contract fillers eliminate the need for vial wshing, depyrogenation, and preparation of vial components such as stoppers and crimp caps.

4.  Higher efficiency: Leveraging modern automated filling technology and barrier isolator systems, fill-finish lines are smaller, have higher throughput, and have longer validation windows.

The article fails to cover the trend toward electron beam sterilization tunnels for aseptic transfer of pre-filled syringe tubs.  AEB Partners Skan and Metall + Plastic offer electron beam tunnels based on AEB's low energy electron beam technology.   When manufacturers and contract fillers invest in state-of-the-art filling and isolation technology, they need a sterile transfer technology that delivers high througput and high levels of sterility assurance.  Electron beam offers significant benefits in this regard over the traditional spray and wipe approaches.