Use cases

Interview with Dr. Florian Immekus, Pharmacy Director, Mühlenkreiskliniken, Germany

4 min read

Feb 17, 2025 12:01:03 PM

Interview with Dr. Florian Immekus, Pharmacy Director, Mühlenkreiskliniken

From specialized cancer treatments to pediatric care, personalized medicine is transforming traditional healthcare through individually tailored medical solutions.

We discussed this development with Dr. Florian Immekus, Head of the Pharmacy at Mühlenkreiskliniken, which operates five hospitals in Germany's Minden-Lübbecke district. Mühlenkreiskliniken employs 5,000 people and treats approximately 250,000 patients annually, with the University Hospital Johannes Wesling Klinikum in Minden serving as its central facility.

Could you give a brief introduction to your pharmacy?

"We deliver pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical expertise to roughly 2,100 hospital beds and 500 rehabilitation beds. As a University Hospital pharmacy, we have extensive capabilities as we manage €40 million in pharmaceutical products and maintain about 2,800 items in our standardized inventory. Our team consists of 44 staff members, including 17 pharmacists with qualifications ranging from PhDs to PhD students and specialists in training.

Production is crucial for us, particularly in sterile compounding for cancer treatment and total parenteral nutrition for newborns. We produce about 40,000 infusion bags annually, including products for clinical trials and individualized medicine. One of our most important priorities is the correct and accurate delivery of pharmaceutical products. Our top priorities are accurate pharmaceutical delivery and ensuring our pharmacists effectively share their knowledge and expertise."

What is the role of personalized medicine in your work?

“Personalized medicine plays an extremely important and growing role in our work, as we treat critically ill patients at our university hospital. This is especially true for our most severe cases.

These patients have specific pharmacokinetic requirements that we must address through individualized pharmacotherapy. Standard dosages often come with limitations. That's when our pharmaceutical innovation begins – developing tailored drug therapies instead of using fixed doses from industrial products.

Personalization is truly an everyday part of our work.”

Where do you see personalized medicine being particularly crucial?

“Cancer treatment is a major area where we apply individualization, particularly in producing customized infusion therapies.

Personalized medicine is also crucial for pediatric patients, especially regarding total parenteral nutrition.

Along with cancer treatment and pediatric parenteral nutrition, intensive care is one of our three main fields where we provide personalized medicine. For example, we treat patients with sepsis using antibiotics, where we employ therapeutic drug monitoring to measure plasma concentrations of antibiotic substances. Based on these measurements, we adjust the treatment – increasing dosages or changing the intervals between applications as needed. These pharmaceutical recommendations are provided to the ICU doctors.”

How has CurifyLabs Compounding System Solution-Technology contributed to your work? What benefits have you observed, and what feedback have you received from your team about the technology?

Regarding CurifyLabs technology, our first impression shows a significant improvement in process standardization.

When we look at how we currently prepare various dosage forms like capsules and suspensions, the manufacturing process heavily depends on the individual employee or technical assistant performing the task. For instance, when mixing powder for capsules, the nature of these traditional production processes makes it difficult to achieve consistent standardization.

Automated compounding brings significant benefits to our process. We now have comprehensive in-process control steps that weren't possible with our old procedures. The technology ensures uniformity of mass across all printed semi-solids. From a regulatory perspective, it's highly beneficial that we can maintain a detailed audit trail for every formulation.

Unlike traditional capsule production, the new printing technology allows us to check quality both during the process and in the finished product. This enhanced quality control is particularly valuable from a regulatory standpoint.

Can you give concrete examples of patients who have been treated with CurifyLabs technology in your pharmacy?

We began treatment with two APIs (Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients): Prednisolone and Furosemide. We selected these APIs in coordination with our University's Department of Pediatrics. We chose them based on two key criteria: their frequent usage and the significant clinical impact of small dose adjustments. These APIs proved to be an excellent starting point for our project.’

To evaluate the results, we developed a questionnaire for both doctors and nurses. The questionnaire focuses on how well the semisolid medications are being accepted and how effectively the workflow is functioning. The initial impressions have been very promising and positive.

What kind of feedback have you received from the doctors about the technology?

We've received positive feedback. Our pediatricians are particularly open-minded and interested in this method.

There are two main aspects to consider. First is the practical improvement in administration. Our pediatricians deal daily with traditional individualized pharmaceutical products that are complicated to administer, for example, having to open capsules. Currently, these capsules need to be mixed, for instance, with yogurt, which can be messy and imprecise. With the new technology, we can eliminate these problems.

Second, doctors are interested in the scientific applications of this technology. They're exploring various research possibilities. For instance, they're investigating how quickly we can transition to oral antibiotic treatment using precisely dosed semi-solid medications.