At the Pharmaceutical Technology Department, we believe that are many sides to a successful pharmacist and many areas where one’s talent could be highlighted. The pharmaceutical technology department has therefore devoted 20% of the pharmaceutical Technology III course offered to the 9th semester pharmacy students to showcase the various areas in which the GUC pharmacy students exceed expectations though The Industrial Pharmacy Exhibition Project.
As part of this project the students have initially paid visits to various pharmaceutical production facilities and observed the main production lines; tablets, capsules, syrups, semi-solid dosage forms, suppositories, etc.
They have also gotten the chance to become acquainted with the different departments and areas in the factory starting from the storage areas, the production area, quality control and quality assurance departments and finally the research and development (R&D) departments.
Next, in groups of 10, students were then assigned a dosage form and relevant production line and were requested to: 1. Formulate the dosage from 2. Package their dosage form and come up with logo, slogan, etc. “ Brand & Market themselves” 3. Run relevant Quality Control tests and provide the results in a typed-professional report. 4. Develop a machete for one of the machines used on an industrial scale to prepare their dosage forms. 5. Prepare a video introducing their dosage form, production line, the team and company. The students showcased their work, on the Industrial Pharmacy Exhibition Day, which was divided into two sections.
The first one was the product evaluation part, in which student groups were evaluated orally by department members and the second part was the exhibition. The exhibition was held in D1. Where the hall was divided into booths devoted to each group of students.
The students very creatively set their booth with banners, prepared flyers and give aways to market their products in front of the guests. Guests included Pharmacy faculty members and guests from the Industry. Dr. Micheal Ezzat R&D head at EVA Pharma and Dr. Mohamed Ezz project manager at Egyptian International Pharmaceuticals Industries Co SAE (EIPICO) have both given us the pleasure of their attendance.
Ninth year semester students, Pharmacy faculty members and Industrial guests all then viewed a compiled video of the students work and marketing campaigns. Through such project the students were given the chance to discover where their strengths lie. Some students showed very high creativity and advanced laboratory skills when it came to dosage form design. Other students showed brilliant entrepreneurship; developing products that created new market space and found the means to market their product and cater for their targeted sector market sector. On a different level such project shed light on how Pharma start-ups could be developed, since ideas like the ones presented and developed are the corner stone of such companies.