One of the UK’s largest pharmaceutical companies needed a quick and reliable method for screening vaccine syringes for defective needles. Here is how we helped

Our client faced a critical challenge, manufacturing defects in syringe needles, described as angling or hooking at the tips. This defect can occur during manufacturing or handling and can affect effectiveness of drug delivery and the needle's ability to puncture the skin smoothly making the injection more painful for the recipient. Detecting and addressing such defects is crucial to ensuring both the safety and efficacy, particularly in delicate applications like vaccine administration.

Needle hooking or angling are nearly invisible deviations which require high-powered microscopes for detection to quantify and observe the flaw reliably. With thousands of syringes in each batch, rapid and accurate assessment was crucial to provide confidence in the batch as a whole.