Innopharma staff and its learners displayed immense agility and flexibility throughout the challenges of COVID 19 using its technology and experience to successfully engage all their students in completing their exams online.  The TU exams were run solely by Innopharma whereby approximately 680 students submitted 2,036 exam scripts in the 10 days during the May 2020 exam cycle.   

In May, several surveys went out to approximately 20 cohorts who had graduated from one of our programmes recently. We received a high response rate and very positive feedback from our graduates. This will be a consistent process going forward which will provide us with a lot of information about our students and improvement points as well. 

SPRINGBOARD+ & HCI SEPTEMBER 2020

We were successful again with our Springboard+ and Human Capital Initiative Pillar 1 submissions. This was a tremendous validation of the hard work we do and the results we deliver for our students every year.  We received over 900 places for our programmes starting in September 2020. In just one day of the applications being open we received over 200 applications. This is an amazing result to see. 

Over the next couple of months, the recruitment stage will be in full swing as we se our programmes filling up!

The team have been continuously working hard on the ongoing improvements with Zoho to help with our recruitment process and also to grow the student elements. A link between the Springboard applications and Zoho CRM has been created where by useful information such as PPS number, Date of Birth, Eircode, Payment Status, Employment Status etc. will be auto-populated onto the system when an applicant submits their Springboard form. 

The Zoho 'how to' series was launched. This consists of quick 1 minute videos to explain how to use all the functions that Zoho has to offer. It is great to see more and more people using the system on an every day basis especially as we are all working remotely this will be a huge benefit to everyone. This is a growing project so if you have any video ideas please let the marketing team know and we can create them.

It was great to be able to take part in the Education Expo again this year, but this time is was slightly different as it was online!
A virtual Innopharma Education stall was set up which included all of our courses, information on Innopharma, graduate testimonials and much more. Potential students browsed around the virtual platform and were able to communicate with us through chat and video options.

A very proud moment for Innopharma Education when Springboard+ launched their podcast featuring our graduate, Laura McCarthy who spoke very highly about our Level 6 Pharma programme. She tells her interesting story of how she moved from managing a horse riding school to now working at Amgen. Definitely worth a listen if you haven't yet!

On Thursday the 28th of June, Finbarr hosted a webinar for all students interested in learning more about our programmes. We had over 300 people registered  for the event and over 170 attended live on the night. The webinar went very well and it was great to see such a high volume interested in studying with us in September, as we received a significant number of applications the next morning. 

On the 2nd of July, Ann will be hosting a webinar for our current Level 7 and Level 8 students who are interested in progressing their careers further with us. The webinar will focus on programme content, duration and learning outcomes for both the Level 8 Honours Degree in Pharmaceutical Business Operations and also the MSc in Pharmaceutical Business and Technology. 

Great work is happening in Cork, Limerick, Galway, Athlone and Waterford. To begin, we have had a very positive outcome on exams results which is great despite the global pandemic and WFH conditions. All results were over 91% and three programmes achieved 100%. Also, we had 8 past students return to complete their repeat exams and have now achieved their Level 6 in Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Operations.  

We have had a strong interest in progression from Level 6 Pharma and Level 6 Food to gain their full Higher Certificate in Process Technologies and then onto the BSc in Process Technologies programme. We already have a high number of applications for our September programmes and look forward to introducing our new cohorts in the next few months. 

It is great to see many of our students gain employment within the industry while studying our programmes. Many students from our Level 6 Pharma Cohort in Waterford have recently landed themselves in a job and have only completed one semester of the programme! 

Here is an overview of the roles our students are working in:

One student progressed from retail to an Operator role in a Medical Device company.
Two new students got promoted:
1 Student from a Operator to a Team Lead in the Medical Device Industry 
1 Student from an Operator to a Technician in the Pharma Industry 

This has been a lovely campaign and has reflected very well on the Innopharma brand. This campaign has also helped to improve our regional brand awareness as we have received a lot of press advertisements across the West. The campaign has been very successful in generating leads and we have been busy contacting candidates and offering advise in terms of upskilling within our industry. Have a look at our Shifting Gears website and make sure to spread the word of this brilliant initiative. 

University of Limerick have agreed to be our first SmartX customer. This is key for our Technology commercialisation plan as this project will enable us to demonstrate the power of our cloud based Technology platform (for a fluidised bed technology) where you can design a process in Dublin, push the recipes through our secure Cloud Infrastructure to Limerick where the runs can be executed and finally we can analyse the data from the runs in real-time in Dublin (or New Jersey for that matter if we had a replicate site there). This will be very powerful and key as we push the commercialisation side of this business.

CONGRATULATIONS GARETH

On Friday 19^th June Dr Gareth Clarke from our Technology Division was awarded a PhD from TCD. As Multieye Product Manager Gareth's current work in the Technology Division involves further development of the Multieye product along with supporting customers on spectrometric and chemometric issue and supporting the application of  our SmartX platform to fluid bed, twin screw with granulation and crystallisation projects.

Dr Gareth’s research leading to the award was in the area of harmonic and superparamagnetic nanoparticles of biomedical imaging and diagnostic applications.

Due to the Covid-19 crisis the ceremony was a ‘virtual convocation’ however I am sure Gareth celebration of the event was very ‘real’ and we wish him a heartfelt congratulations on this achievement. 

A VERY EXCITING PROJECT 

At the beginning of May, Enterprise Ireland awarded the Technology Division a (RD&I)  Research, Development & Innovation grant to support the development of our SmartX platform for use in (TSWG) twin screw wet granulation processes. We are excited about this project as it enables us to work closely with Thermofisher Scientific, a premium provider of TSWG equipment in demonstrating the benefit of SmartX for accelerating process development and in commercial manufacturing processes. TSWG is a continuous manufacturing process which will benefit from the control and insight that SmartX can deliver. As part of this project we will be acquiring a Thermofisher Scientific which can be used for both TSWG and hot melt extrusion processes.

             THERMOFISHER PHARMA 11 WITH INLINE EYECON

THE NEW NORM

As we become more used "to the new normal” way of working our services team have adapted accordingly and continue to deliver value for our clients.  Our team continue to work remotely and site visits in general, tend to be on an as needs basis only.  It has been an unusual start to their career’s in the pharma industry for Ayushi and Pragya (who were introduced in our last newsletter).  Their first 5 weeks were spent working remotely which is a challenge when settling into a new company and indeed a new city – the girls are getting on site a little more now and have adapted very well.  Well done Pragya and Ayushi.  A similar situation has arisen with Pedro Albuquerque.  Pedro spent a number of months with Boston scientific in Cork.  When the corona virus struck Pedro’s projects were put on hold and therefore, in early May, Pedro moved to Amgen in Dun Laoghaire in an equipment qualification role.  Although Pedro joins Pedro De Grandis and Tom O’Connor at Amgen, he has worked remotely to date but should get to site in the coming weeks.  

VALIDATION UPDATES

As mentioned in our last newsletter we commenced a new validation programme on March 30^th with Cohort number 12.  This programme is being run exclusively on-line through both our training platform “Go to Training” and the Microsoft “Teams” platform.  Well done to Audrey and Caroline who modified content and structure accordingly in order to make the programme as practical as possible under the current climate. As restrictions ease, we will look for opportunities to bring the group into Sandyford to perform some executions.

We welcome Ann Ryan on board to support business development of the technical services division.  Ann is Business Development Manager /Program Training Support Manager with our education division and has been with Innopharma since 2013.  Ann is currently working on interview skills with our cohort 12 group and has been instrumental in putting together the final pieces of the Technical Services website.

NEW COHORT STARTS IN JULY
Cohort 13 will commence on July 6^th again in a mainly on-line capacity initially. Recruitment is in progress with quite a few referrals from our existing employees – thanks guys.

OUR QC ANALYST PROGRAMME

Our Quality Control Analyst training programme has been badly affected by the corona virus issue.  We had just completed our inaugural programme and our new QC Analysts were industry ready when the virus arrived.  Recruitment of QC analysts across the industry was suddenly stalled.  However, some green shoots are starting to appear, and we expect to have interviews organised for the group in the coming weeks.  Our QC Analyst programme is almost exclusively hands-on in the laboratory in Sandyford, which is very challenging under the current restrictions.  Irene is busy developing a methodology to deliver the programme in a safe way. Accordingly, we have delayed our next intake until early September – we will advertise through the Technical Services LinkedIn page when recruitment commences.

NEW STARTER CATHAL O'LEARY

Cathal holds a BSc in Microbiology from Trinity College, Dublin. After completing the Validation programme Cathal spent a number of months with our technology department, assisting with manufacturing of trial batches in the pilot lab and with our education department, developing content for the QC e-learning module.  Cathal has now joined Eli Lilly in Cork in support of their cleaning validation activities in their OSD plant.  Cathal joins David, Catherine, Juliana and Beatriz at Lilly.

MARKETING - SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS

Our Technical Services LinkedIn page was set up in February of this year and continues to grow with over 700 followers.  Follow us for updates on activities and topics of interest within the (bio)pharmaceutical and Med Tech industries.

WEBSITE DEVELOPMENTS   

Website: After a lot of design reviews, redesigns, content generation, content revision, content uploading, we are at the final stages of development and expect to launch our website next week.  

CONGRATULATIONS CAROLINE
We’ve had the wonderful news of Caroline’s new arrival, little Lilly born on June 17^th weighing in at 9lb 1oz.  Big sisters Chloe and Paige are delighted with their little sister.  Congratulations to Caroline and Michael.

Innoskills is continuing to grow. The team have been working on a Lab/QC module. Paula and Irene have focused on the content generation and Finbarr and Charles have focused on the production side. It is really important that we continue to invest and grow Innoskills.com as this will become our virtual hub for all thing's education.  

BOOK & FILM CLUB

Any employees interested in taking part were asked to read ‘This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diary of a Junior Doctor’ which is a collection of diary entries written by Adam Kay across his time in medical training from 2004-2010. Our Fiml/TV pick of the month was the popular Netflix basketball documentary ‘The Last Dance’, the series focuses on Michael Jordans time with the Chicago Bulls and received raving reviews over the last number of months. We hope everyone enjoys the challenge of reading a book every few weeks and enjoys our top pick on TV. 

STEM4KIDS kicked off back in March which was a huge success and helped keep all of the Innopharma team connected throughout the last few months. (with the help of the Innopharma children!) Here is a recap of the activities:

BAKING WITH A HINT OF SCIENCE WITH MARY JENSEN 
If you missed or want to try Mary's Easter cookies again here is the recipe.

NEWTONS LAW FUN EXPERIENCE WITH PAULA KEARNEY 

Paula gave a very engaging presentation explaining Newtons law with a messy experiment to demonstrate!

Sandra gave great some advice on choosing college courses, what tools are available to help your son/daughter choose the right path, considerations when making a CAO application & what is Plan B?

Another fun baking session happened down in Clane where Ann & Lizzie made the best ever chocolate cupcakes topped with lots of treats!

We got a very interesting introduction to JavaScript code and learnt how to make a simple calculator. 

Well done to everyone involved!