Edge Pharmacy Services, LLC announced that it has acquired Apolab ULC of Mississauga, Ontario. Edge is a rapidly growing US based 503B Outsourcing facility with business elements spanning the gamut of compounded pharmaceutical products. With the acquisition of the Apolab facility, Edge moves internationally with its unit-dose compounded products.
Edge is investing substantial resources to upgrading the Canadian facility to meet stringent Health Canada and Ontario College of Pharmacy regulations. With Canada demanding similar requirements imposed on compounding facilities as the FDA in the United States, Edge sees this facility as an early adopter of these new regulations, and in particular envisions high volume compounding as a means to improve both the availability and safety of medications throughout Canada, while simultaneously reducing health care costs.
At present, hospitals across Canada must individually compound doses of medications for use in surgeries. This distributed model means inefficiency. The bigger issue, however, is whether every hospital across Canada will be able (and have the budget) to implement the new USP and NAPRA guidelines required to safely compound drugs. This enormous undertaking comes at significant cost to Canada. In this way compounding outsourcing facilities, called Drug Preparation Premises in Ontario, can help alleviate the demand on hospital pharmacies while at the same time bringing them into regulatory compliance. And since the pharmaceutical production is centralized, both capital investment and ongoing unit costs are drastically reduced.
Edge is excited to bring this new pharmaceutical model to Canada. The combination of safety, efficiency, and reduced drug costs should have a real impact on the health care in Canada, while at the same time creating skilled labor jobs.