Gerresheimer has unveiled Gx InnoSafe, an integrated and passive safety system for avoiding needle stick injuries. The German company, a manufacturer of primary packaging products for medication and drug delivery devices, presented the new technology at an event that took place on 7 February at Pharmapack in Paris.
The Gx InnoSafe technology was developed to solve the risk of used syringes at physicians' surgeries, laboratories and hospital, because of their exposed cannulas.
Although existing needle protection systems reduce the risk of injury for the end user, they are more complex for pharma companies to fill and must be handled by medical specialists.
With the Gx InnoSafe, Gerresheimer is now offering a syringe with an integrated passive safety system that avoids inadvertent needle stick injuries, preventing repeated use and designed with pharmaceutical companies’ production processes in mind, as well as being optimised for simple and intuitive use by medical specialists.
“For health care workers, handling used hypodermic needles is part of their day-to-day job. In some cases, this leads to serious diseases being transmitted. It is estimated that around one million needle stick injuries occur in Europe every year,” said Maximilian Vogl, Product Manager Injection Devices at Gerresheimer.
Safety first
Unlike many existing solutions, the Gx InnoSafe features a needle shield mechanism that activates automatically and does not require any additional manipulation by the end user.
The system is only activated when the cannula is inserted and it automatically ensures that the safety mechanism is permanently locked when the syringe is removed from the injection site. This guarantees that the cannula is reliably covered and the syringe cannot be reused.
As part of the manufacturing process, the Gx InnoSafe safety system is installed on Gx RTF glass syringes in a cleanroom, like a standard needle shield.
The processing of the Gx InnoSafe syringes, which can be carried out without any major changes to existing lines in a nested state, is just as beneficial to pharmacists. This eliminates the need for an additional step to assemble the safety system, as is currently standard on the market.
The syringe body is completely visible so that the presence of the active ingredient, its purity and its administration can be observed and monitored with ease.
The injection itself is also administered as usual. After removing the ergonomic sealing cap with an integrated, flexible needle shield, the syringe is placed on the injection site, the cannula is inserted into the tissue to be administered and the active ingredient is injected as with a common syringe.
Gx InnoSafe has also been designed to provide advantages for pharmaceutical companies in the filling process of ready-to-fill syringes. The safety system is installed during the RTF process, automatically and fully checked for any punctures and positioning with a visual inspection.
The syringes are then packaged into trays of 100 (nests) and tubs, including the safety system, and are then sealed and sterilised with ethylene oxide gas. They can be processed on existing filling lines without any additional preparation or assembly steps.
The design of the safety mechanism avoids inadvertent activation during filling, packaging and transport.
