An Interactive Software Tool for the Design of Pharmaceutical Products and Processes

Project Title

An Interactive Software Tool for the Design of Pharmaceutical Products and Processes

Project Leader

Prof Ka Ming Ng

School / Dept

SENG / CENG

Project Duration

Jan 2004 - Jun 2005

Project Description

Chemical engineering students should gain experience in design and development of the pharmaceutical processes and products. But the design procedure involves many calculations that may stifle creative thinking. To facilitate teaching and learning, this project aimed to develop software to integrate and simulate the design of unit operations, the complete process and dosage form. Students focused on choosing product attributes and manipulating the operating conditions; hence optimizing the product quality; production, capital and labour cost. The tool also allowed them to solve realistic problems and gain experience in product-centred pharmaceutical engineering in an interactive, virtual environment.

Project Outcome

• The ProWare® was rewritten using another programming language, C++. It was named as “Pharmaceutical Products and Processes Simulation System (P3S2)”. P3S2 had a totally new theme of graphic user interfaces. Unit operations of reactions, separations, solids processing and final dosage forms in pharmaceutical processes were incorporated. It could simulate a complete pharmaceutical process and was more powerful and user-friendly than the previous version.
• Together with the source code of P3S2, a user guide and a design document were prepared.
• In addition, an in-class demonstration of this software was carried out in one of the lectures of CENG 367 – Pharmaceutical Engineering. Students tested the tool and used it to solve two homework problems.
• An evaluation regarding the improvement in teaching and learning and user-friendliness of the software was conducted.

Status

Completed

Project Documents
(Only accessible by HKUST users)

• Project Plan
• Progress Report: First | Second |
• Final Report

Adaptation

Full Project