Closing the Loop: An Integrative Framework for Managing Unwanted Pharmaceuticals During COVID-19 and Beyond

26 Pages Posted: 3 Feb 2022 Last revised: 23 Feb 2022

See all articles by Jie Han

Jie Han

Institute of Global Environmental Change, School of Human Settlements and Civil Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University

Date Written: January 25, 2022

Abstract

Improved healthcare and an aging global population have exacerbated demand for pharmaceuticals. During the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, individuals are either prescribed with excess medications or proactively stockpile over-the-counter drugs to ensure preparedness or under panic buying, which may have left an unprecedent quantity of expired and excess pharmaceuticals in households around the globe. Unwanted household pharmaceuticals are normally collected and incinerated in centralized facilities. This approach, however, relies on bulk collections through drug take-back programs that are held regularly in communities and voluntary actions by drug owners. During COVID-19, these programs have been impacted by lockdowns and the shortage of resources under constant prioritization efforts, while excess and unwanted pharmaceuticals are left to expire in households. Inappropriate disposal of these pharmaceuticals, given their sheer volume and bioactivities, pose a significant threat to the ecosystem and public health. Meanwhile, many pharmaceuticals are in short supply as production capacities are constrained by the ongoing pandemic. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration reported that under normal storage conditions, active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) in drugs generally remain intact and potent long after their expiring dates (as long as 15 years). Further, most synthetic drugs have a simple matrix with few ingredients and good environmental stability. So far, there is a lack of effective and sustainable strategies to manage unwanted pharmaceuticals in an epidemic or pandemic scenario. The key to address this unmet demand is to enable user-based submission of drugs and information, with machine-readable codes for automatic sorting and fine-categorization, and explore existing techniques for the recovery of APIs from unwanted pharmaceuticals for reuse. By utilizing the existing Internet and logistics infrastructure, this article proposes a new strategy for managing unwanted household pharmaceuticals where owners—as opposed to staff in centralized waste management facilities—sort their unwanted pharmaceuticals and submit information online where the system auto-generates free coded mailing labels to separate opened and unused pharmaceuticals as well as expired and non-expiring varieties. These will be shipped to centralized sorting facilities where unopened pharmaceuticals will be further sorted by code scanning and categorization based on their active ingredients, expiring dates, and forms (tablets, capsules, gels). Depending on their formulation, fine-sorted drug varieties will be ready for API extraction, returned to manufacturers for de-formulation and reuse, or re-distributed to other patients in need, thereby closing the loop in managing the flow of pharmaceuticals. Such an integrated policy and technology framework will not only reduce the entry loads of bioactive pharmaceuticals into the environment, but alleviate the shortage and costs of pharmaceuticals and raw ingredients by tapping into the vast resource left from the current pandemic and beyond.

Note:
Funding: This work was funded by the Young Talent Support Plan of Xi’an Jiaotong University and the Natural Science Basis Research Plan in Shaanxi Province of China (2021JM-008).

Declaration of Interests: The author declares no conflict of interest in this work.

Keywords: Medicine; drug; recycle; recovery; pandemic; coronavirus

Suggested Citation

Han, Jie, Closing the Loop: An Integrative Framework for Managing Unwanted Pharmaceuticals During COVID-19 and Beyond (January 25, 2022). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4020765 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4020765

Jie Han (Contact Author)

Institute of Global Environmental Change, School of Human Settlements and Civil Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University ( email )

28 Xianning West Road
Xi'an Jiaotong University
Xi'an, Shaanxi 710049
China

HOME PAGE: http://gr.xjtu.edu.cn/web/jiehan/covid-19

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