Recent government and private investment is driving new growth in UK pharmaceutical manufacturing, but physical infrastructure is only part of the picture: every batch also depends on the sensing technologies that monitor what is happening inside it.
Here, Ross Turnbull, Director of Business Development at ASIC design and supply specialist Swindon Silicon Systems, explains why the silicon behind those sensors matters as much as the investment itself.
Through the Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund, the government is supporting projects that expand the production of medicines and vaccines, with the fund helping to unlock more than £600 million of private investment in UK life sciences manufacturing this year. As Health and Social Care Secretary James Murray put it, the plan has “brought in £3 billion to speed up access to innovative treatments” over that same period.
In addition, the £520 million capital grants scheme, introduced as part of the Life Sciences Sector Plan, is intended to strengthen UK manufacturing capability, with recent funding supporting projects including a near-patient biomanufacturing facility for producing medicines and vaccines for clinical trials.
As pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity expands, the supporting technologies that enable reliable production are also becoming increasingly important. Among these is process monitoring, which provides the data needed to maintain control over manufacturing conditions and product quality.
Where physical becomes digital
Pharmaceutical manufacturing depends on monitoring process parameters such as pH, temperature and pressure throughout production. None of these can be read directly by a control system: each one must first be captured by a sensor and converted from a physical signal into a digital one. The accuracy and consistency of this conversion is what makes process monitoring reliable, making the sensing electronics behind each measurement as important as the sensor itself.
This challenge repeats itself across a factory. A tablet press tracking compression force, a freeze dryer monitoring chamber pressure during lyophilisation and a chromatography skid measuring conductivity during purification all rely on the same underlying principle: a physical property captured, conditioned and converted before it becomes usable data downstream.
Inside the bioreactor
Consider a bioreactor used to produce biologic medicines such as monoclonal antibodies, where dissolved oxygen is a key process parameter for cell growth and product yield. The probe monitoring this produces a low-level analogue signal, and any drift in that reading can be difficult to distinguish from a genuine change in the bioprocess itself. Electrical noise from nearby motors, pumps and variable-speed drives can degrade this signal, making process conditions harder to interpret accurately, prompting unnecessary investigation or, worse, delaying the identification of a real deviation. This is where measurement quality is established, making the design of the interface electronics just as important as the sensor itself.
A mixed-signal ASIC positioned close to the probe can be designed to acquire the signal, amplify it using a low-noise analogue front end, convert it into a digital value, apply on-chip calibration and transmit the processed data to the plant’s distributed control system. Performing these functions close to the sensing element can reduce the distance an analogue signal must travel before digitisation, helping to minimise susceptibility to electrical interference.
Built for the long run
Sensor interface electronics in pharmaceutical manufacturing also need to remain functional over long production lifetimes, as manufacturing lines are typically validated against specific hardware and changes to critical components may require requalification. Because ASICs are designed for a specific application, they can offer greater control over functionality and component lifecycle than off-the-shelf components, whose availability is often influenced by broader commercial demand rather than the requirements of an individual production line.
Beyond measurement performance, integration can also influence the overall design of a sensing system: combining multiple analogue and digital functions within a single ASIC can reduce component count, simplify PCB layout and qualification, and lower overall system complexity.
As investment continues to expand pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity in the UK, attention naturally focuses on new facilities and production equipment. Less visible, but equally fundamental, are the sensing technologies that allow those facilities to operate with confidence. From acquiring low-level analogue signals to delivering reliable digital process data, the electronics that sit between the sensor and the control system form an integral part of modern pharmaceutical manufacturing. As manufacturing becomes more data-driven, the design of those interfaces is set to become a more important engineering consideration.
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