The pharmaceutical and fine chemical industries are eager to strive toward innovative products and technologies. This study first derives hotspots in resource consumption of 2839 Basic Operations in 40 Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient synthesis steps through Exergetic Life Cycle Assessment (ELCA). Second, since companies are increasingly obliged to quantify the environmental sustainability of their products, two alternative ways of simplifying (E)LCA are discussed. The usage of averaged product group values (R(2) = 3.40 × 10(-30)) is compared with multiple linear regression models (R(2) = 8.66 × 10(-01)) in order to estimate resource consumption of synthesis steps. An optimal set of predictor variables is postulated to balance model complexity and embedded information with usability and capability of merging models with existing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) data systems. The amount of organic solvents used, molar efficiency, and duration of a synthesis step were shown to be the most significant predictor variables. Including additional predictor variables did not contribute to the predictive power and eventually weakens the model interpretation. Ideally, an organization should be able to derive its environmental impact from readily available ERP data, linking supply chains back to the cradle of resource extraction, excluding the need for an approximation with product group averages.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Background Environmental impact assessments of pharmaceuticals typically consider only a part of the pharmaceutical supply chain, e.g. tablet formulation. While the environmental impact can be expressed in environmental Human Health burden due to resource use and emissions, the Human Health benefit of the pharmaceutical treatment of patients is currently not simultaneously taken into account. The study aims include a cradle-to-grave assessment of all Human Health impacts of the production, administration and disposal of two antipsychotics for the treatment of schizophrenia. This is complemented with the environmental impact of health care providers such as hospitals. The aim is to holistically quantify to what extent the environmental Human Health burden compares to the Human Health benefit associated with the treatment. Methods We applied an overall framework which included Life Cycle Assessment to model the environmental Human Health impacts of the pharmaceutical supply chain, administration and disposal of the drug and health care providers. To model the patient benefit, this was complemented with a Markov model with a 1-year time horizon. Three patient groups were modeled: medicine coverage of paliperidone palmitate for either one month (PP1M) or three months (PP3M) at a time, and compared to Treatment Interruption (TI) as a control group. Outcomes were quantified using Years of Life Lost (YLL), Years Lived with Disability (YLD) and Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALY). Results The main environmental impacts were visits to the psychiatrist and psychiatric hospitals. The pharmaceutical supply chain had a limited impact. For 1000 patients for 1 year, PP1M and PP3M respectively avoided 0.38 and 0.49 environmental DALYs compared to TI. PP1M and PP3M further avoided 45.60 and 57.87 YLL and 23.31 and 29.91 YLD compared to TI. The main outcome was the sum of environmental DALYs, YLL and YLD, in which PP1M and PP3M respectively avoided 69.29 and 88.26 DALYs. Alternative analysis of Quality-Adjusted Life Years confirmed the results. Conclusions The overall environmental burden was lower for PP1M and PP3M treatment than Treatment Interruption because patients are kept more stable, which reduces the environmental burden due to hospitals. Moreover, the Human Health burden was outweighed by the Human Health benefit. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12913-019-4247-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

No abstract

Life Cycle Assessment typically focuses on the footprint of products and services, expressed on three Areas of Protection (AoP): Human Health, Ecosystems and Resources. While the handprint is often expressed qualitatively, quantified handprints have recently been compared directly to the footprint concerning one AoP: Human Health. We propose to take this one step further by simultaneously comparing the quantified handprint and footprint on all AoPs through normalization and weighting of the results towards a single score. We discuss two example cases of a pharmaceutical treatment: mebendazole to treat soiltransmitted helminthiases and paliperidone palmitate to treat schizophrenia. Each time, treatment is compared to 'no treatment'. The footprint of health care is compared to the handprint of improved patient health. The handprint and footprint were normalized separately. To include sensitivity in the normalization step we applied four sets of external normalization factors for both handprint (Global Burden of Disease) and footprint (ReCiPe and PROSUITE). At the weighting step we applied 26 sets of panel weighting factors from three sources. We propose the Relative Sustainability Benefit Rate (RSBR) as a new metric to quantify the relative difference in combined handprint and footprint single score between two alternatives. When only considering the footprint, the first case study is associated with an increased single score burden of treatment compared to 'no treatment', while in the second case study treatment reduces the single score burden by 41.1% compared to 'no treatment'. Also including the handprint provided new insights for the first case study, now showing a decrease of 56.4% in single score burden for treatment compared to 'no treatment'. For the second case study the reduction of single score burden was confirmed as the handprint burden was also decreased because of treatment by 9.9%, reinforcing the findings.