The ISPE foundation is passionately committed to investing in the future of the pharmaceutical industry, it also does so through a program to promote students and emerging leaders, young graduates and those already employed in the pharmaceutical sector; coordinating everything for Italy is Maria Paravani, head of the Emerging Leaders & Students group of ISPE Italy Affiliate.
This year, 100 scholarships were issued for students and young graduates no more than five years old to take part in the ISPE Annual European Conference, held in Amsterdam from 8 to 10 May, or to participate in the annual Meeting & Expo ISPE which will be held in Las Vegas from 15 to 18 October (applications are still open).
With this grant, ISPE offers the winners free registration for the congress, two years of ISPE membership, reimbursement of travel expenses up to an amount of 1400 euros; the Hackathon event promoted by the Emerging Leaders group gave the winners of the grants (students and recent graduates) the opportunity to participate in the event.
Students and young people from the pharmaceutical sector from all over the world were welcomed in Amsterdam on 7 May, including our seven Italians: Laura De Santis, Armando Kolici, Enrico Laudadio, Adele Macrì Panarese, Luca Ricciolino, Carlo Russo and Maria Luisa Lolito .
On this day before the start of the works, ISPE organized an orientation session for all the winners of the scholarships, with the aim of illustrating the activity of the ISPE foundation and introducing the young people, who have found this networking opportunity, to get to know each other extremely positive.
The three-day conference focused on five points:
- Digital transformation and Pharma 4.0
- Manufacturing trends
- Good engineering practice
- Supply chain resiliency
- GAMP 5
The concepts that emerged most were those of advanced automation, continuous production and the role of artificial intelligence, and how these are the tools to improve the pharmaceutical sector. A topic of particular attention was the shortage of medicines, a major concern for the healthcare system and for which digital transformation will come in handy.
GAMP 5 published last July was also much discussed: it is a guide (Good automated manufacturing practice) published by ISPE which provides guidelines for the validation of IT systems used in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.
Among the guests of the conference were Emer Cooke, executive director of EMA, representatives of the European Commission and FDA and personalities from world-famous companies.
The kids described the event as an extremely stimulating and educational experience, an initiative by the ISPE foundation that certainly hit the mark.
The Hackathon for Emerging Leaders and Students was equally successful: a 24-hour competition focused on pharma 4.0, during which the different teams had to create a project on advanced therapies that was innovative and practicable, from many points of view. It was necessary to make use of the skills of each member of the team, and everyone had something to learn from the expertise of the others.
Among the participants in the Hackathon, the italian Enrico Laudadio, who we asked to tell firsthand the experience he had (we advise you to watch until the end to find out how Enrico’s team positioned itself in the competition). https://youtu.be/Oq84CuXfkpg
