Unilab: Where quality is a way of life
For millions of Filipinos, the blockbuster brands of Unilab, Inc. are a vital part of their everyday life.
From vitamins to quick relief products and prescription drugs, Unilab is relied upon to deliver affordable, effective and safe over-the-counter and ethical medicine.
That Unilab’s products such as Ceelin, Biogesic, Decolgen, Solmux, Alaxan, Enervon, Kremil-S, Myra and ImmunPro, to name a few, have achieved their lofty status is by no means an accident.
Rather, the achievement was the direct result of Unilab’s dedication to meeting and even exceeding the strictest product quality standards over the past 81 years.
The consistency over time and across Unilab’s facilities in the Philippines and abroad has won the trust of Filipinos who now have Unilab’s products at the top of their mind when they go to the nearest drugstore for their needs.
Part of overseeing the company’s adherence to the highest standards of quality process is research and development (R&D), which is headed by Joyce Bedelia B. Santos, Unilab’s Operating Vice President and Head of R&D.
Santos stressed that since Unilab started its own manufacturing operations, the sense of responsibility and accountability to each customer or patient has been ingrained across the sprawling organization.
Quality checks are integrated at every step, led by experts in the field who are directly involved in production, from the supply to the logistics teams.
Santos is particularly proud of Unilab’s dedicated, dynamic and all-Filipino research and development team, as the talented members have been able to introduce new ways of working with drug molecules to bring to the market new and improved products but with the same dedication to quality.
“Since the 1960s, innovation has been at the heart of our formulation. Each product that is manufactured in the Unilab facilities starts in the R&D laboratory where they go rigorous testing to ensure quality and efficacy and particularly safety for the customer and the patient,” said Santos, who started as a scientist at Unilab in 1983.
Santos’ experience and body of knowledge translate into valuable inputs of Unilab, which constantly finds way to improve on or develop new products suitable for the Philippines and the greater Southeast Asian market.
“We don’t just develop products at random, we develop those that will be of benefit to our country,” she said, “We take time to understand the Filipino customer and then the gaps that our products can cover. Innovation is not just about developing a new product. It also involves developing solutions that will address barriers that affect patients’ compliance to their medication.”
Among the earliest breakthroughs made through this spirit of innovation was in the area of children’s medicine.
Unilab developed a now patented taste masking technology called TasteRite that covers up the natural taste of medicines, thus making it easier for children to regularly take their medicine for faster relief of their symptoms. More importantly, they have a greater chance of complying as prescribed by their doctors because they like the way their medicines taste.
TasteRite technology has also found its way into the adult medicines, particularly Solmux Advance for the treatment of cough.
“It has become a must in the product, a minimum requirement for our liquids,” she said.
The continuous innovation stems from Unilab’s life cycle management strategy, where products are constantly evaluated to come up with the next generation of products that will suit the changing needs of the market.
Many of today’s young consumers, for example, prefer to take their vitamins in the gummies format because they want some variety and fun, even with their medicine. By adopting the gummies format, they get medicine that is a bit more exciting but still effective.
Adults are just as demanding with compliance being a major issue.
They do not want to take huge tablets that are hard to swallow, thus Unilab has developed ways through R&D to be able to deliver the same level of efficacy but in a smaller tablet or capsule.
This is a particular challenge for Metformin, which has become the first line treatment for diabetics.
“We think of ways to make the pill even smaller for sustained compliance. We are also thinking about how to enhance efficacy even at lower dosage levels. This and more are the sort of innovative thinking that go on as we think of the next generation of our drugs,” Santos explained.
Indeed, Unilab has done a lot of innovations which have been a staple in most Filipino households.
One of the products of Unilab was patented in 2018 for the combination of carbocysteine and zinc, which was thought to be impossible to develop in single dose configuration given the nature of its therapeutic agents. The breakthrough came via tablets that have the right and effective dose to patients. We recognize this product as Solmux Advance with Zinc, which is now available as well in liquid format.
Another milestone came just before the pandemic when the team sought to answer the question of how to further improve on ascorbic acid, which has always been one of the core products of Unilab.
“How do you formulate better ascorbic acid? We thought of putting in something that the body really needs to beef up the immune system– and that is zinc,” she said.
The challenge though was that zinc does not easily combine with ascorbic acid and affects the stability of the product.
But through testing and research, Unilab came up with ImmunPro, which is a stable formulation of the combined ascorbic acid and zinc, packed in a tablet that is easy to swallow and at a fair and affordable price.
“During COVID-19, ImmunPro was really the product that a lot of people took because it boosted their immune system. That popularity lives on today. And we even provided an upgrade – ImmunPro Prime – that added Vitamin D – another patented formulation,” she said.
Another example of innovation at work is the Diatabs Advance that combines loperamide and simeticone for longer relief from gastric pain, and Kremil-S Cool Relief, a liquid over-the-counter medicine for heartburn, acid reflux and indigestion which is another format apart from the chewable tablet that we are more familiar with.
Santos shares that the process of innovation never ceases and is always driven by the need to provide the market what it needs in the most viable way possible.
Since not all bright ideas are necessarily feasible, she says that the R&D experts go through a long brainstorming process before coming up with a single idea that can be worked on all the way to manufacturing and delivery to the customer, a process that can take at least six months.
“It is important to thoroughly think out the idea, map out the program of study so that you do things right the first time. You cannot afford to repeat or make mistakes lots of times,” she said.
After all, the cost of R&D is a factor in pricing the end-product so the mandate is to streamlining the manufacturing process and making it as effective as possible, from the sourcing to the actual process so that the product that will reach the market will be fair priced.
Also guiding Unilab are the stringent requirements that regulatory bodies quite rightly impose on the pharmaceutical industry.
“We are in a very highly regulated industry,” she says, “To be able to guarantee safety consistently, quality needs to be in place. So that is strictly embedded in our processes, our systems,” she said.
And the responsibility does not end when the products go out of the factory.
There is a team dedicated for monitoring the products once they are released to the market as part of the company’s product safety protocol.
It is also by keeping the ears close to the ground that Unilab is able to continue producing high quality, safe and trusted products.
For the prescription drugs, medicine for cardiovascular and metabolic diseases such as diabetes will remain a priority because of the volume of patients who are suffering from these chronic diseases.
They can be rest assured that the R&D team and the entire Unilab family will bring the medicine that will help them manage these diseases as well as their pocket through their work in the laboratories and the plants.
“In Unilab, what differentiates us is that everybody here cares about the consumer, the patient,” she says.
For the R&D team in particular, they are inspired by the need to develop a product that their own family members and loved ones will be able to take.
“That is how trusting we are of the products that we manufacture. If you’re confident enough to bring the medicine to your closest and dearest, then you’re confident enough to bring it to the public,” she said.
