The Pistoia Alliance has launched the User Experience for Life Sciences toolkit, designed to help pharma and biotech companies improve the user-friendliness of their software. We find out how poorly designed software can impact R&D, and how the toolkit could help.

We also consider the problem of unapproved and unregulated antibiotics being manufactured in India, investigate whether self-imposed price caps by some big pharma companies will be enough to keep drugs affordable, and find out more about Elsevier’s plans to create a new taxonomy for traditional Chinese medicine.

Finally, we take a look inside Canada’s Centre for Drug Research and Development as it works to solve unmet medical needs using innovative technologies, and unveil the six winning packaging systems at Pharmapack Europe 2018, which range from a motor-driven disposable auto-injector to an all-in-one contactless multi-dose delivery cap.

Katie Woodward, editor