Pumping Patient Compliance Through Osmosis: Seriously, Employing Pump to Deliver Medications Orally?

Abstract

Patient medication compliance is an issue often seen when repetitive dosing is required. Sustained release drug products have been proven effective in improving patient compliance by providing a simplified dosage regimen. A novel sustained release drug delivery system called “Osmotic pump drug delivery system” was developed to alleviate problems associated with patient compliance. Osmotic pumps allow for less frequent dosing, but retain consistent delivery of a therapeutic dose over the specified time interval. However, very limited to none, visual demonstration of the drug release kinetics is reported in literature, which makes it difficult for students, health care professionals and the general population to understand and appreciate this novel technology. The aim of our study was to produce a visual representation of drug release from the osmotic drug delivery system to aid in the understanding of this innovative technology employed for drug delivery. Two different types of osmotic pumps, Push-Pull Osmotic Pump (PPOP) and Elementary Osmotic pump (EOP) were investigated. Visual release mechanism of Sudafed 24 (EOP) and Glucotrol XL (PPOP) were captured by exposing the aforementioned delivery systems in various mediums (aqueous medium, a medium representing gastric pH, and a medium representing intestinal pH). Photographs were taken at specific time intervals to demonstrate the release of drugs from the osmotic pump delivery systems.