Tackling the blind spot of poor-quality medicines in Universal Health Coverage

Table 2 Estimated costs of selected commercially-available technologies for the determination of medicine quality

	Device	Applications/Feature	Unit Price (USD), estimated, 2017
1	TruScan®	Pharmaceutical raw materials. Hand-held (portable)	70,000^a
2	HPLC	Identity, impurities, content uniformity	80,000^b
3	UV-Vis spectrophotometer	Identity, quantification. Bench-top	10,000^c
4	Mini-Lab®	Identity, semi-quantification. Portable	8000^a
5	Dissolution apparatus	Dissolution; bench-top	10,000^d

^aManufacturer’s quoted price. 2017. Private communication. (Price includes installation and training)
^bEstimated based on an internet search on Amazon
^cPurchase price for a double-beam brand. 2018
^dIndicative price for an entry-level, used, system

ISSN: 2052-3211