Point of Care

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On 21 October 2024, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) announced that the UK will be the first country in the world to introduce a tailored framework for the manufacture of innovative medicines at or close to the location where a patient receives care.

A new statutory instrument was laid before the UK parliament to amend the Human Medicines Regulations 2012 and the Medicines for Human Use (Clinical Trials) Regulations 2004, to provide a new regulatory framework to support the manufacture and supply of these innovative products. This includes:

  1. products with a very short shelf life and highly personalised medicines that mean they have to be manufactured close to the place where they are administered; known as Point of Care, or POC, products. This often applies to advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs), but could also be technologies such as 3D printing.
  2. products that are manufactured in a self-contained modular unit, to enable deployment from that site to other locations; known as Module Manufacture, or MM, products.

This new framework follows a consultation in 2021, discussed in a previous blog post. The consultation received overwhelming support, and 91% of responders agreed with the need for a new regulatory framework. At present, there is no specific framework that covers decentralised manufacturing of medicines in the UK, but as products become more innovative, and more personalised to the patient, the need for change has increased. At present, any on-site manufacturing has to rely on the hospital having obtained the necessary licences and having put in place the required quality, safety and traceability standards under the general framework. This leads to practical – and contractual – difficulties between the company and hospital sites.

The new framework seeks to provide the necessary regulatory oversight to ensure that POC and MM products have appropriate quality, safety, and efficacy attributes, whilst allowing increasing numbers of patients to benefit from these innovative products. According to the MHRA, the proposed regulation ensures that POC and MM products can be more easily made in or near a hospital setting and can get to the patients who need them safely and more quickly.Continue Reading UK to implement novel framework for point of care manufacture of medicinal products

On 25 January 2023, the UK government published its response to the consultation on Point of Care (POC) manufacturing, described as personalised medicines made for the patient either within or very close to the healthcare setting. The joint consultation between the MHRA and the Northern Ireland Department of Health sought views on legislative proposals to introduce a new regulatory framework for the manufacture and supply of POC products. Those proposals were warmly received by stakeholders and steps will now be taken to introduce amendments to the legislative framework for POC manufacture and supply.Continue Reading MHRA consultation on medicines manufactured at the point of care