Craft Health is a personalised nutrition and medicines platform, leveraging 3D printing technologies in order to simplify the process of pill-taking for patients and consumers. Their core competencies as pharmacists, formulation scientists and 3D printing experts converge upon the solution of 3D printing medicines or nutraceuticals into a reduced number of pills. The Craft Health platform takes into account pharmaceutical and nutraceutical requirements such as safety, stability, and controlled released profiles.
To achieve this, the Craft Health platform is made up of two segments:
(A) CraftBlends: a proprietary formulation database that allows for various controlled release profiles and;
(B) CraftMake: a Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP)-ready 3D printer dedicated to 3D printing of pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals without heat or UV curing.
Left to Right: Co-founders Dr Seng Han LIM (COO of Craft Health) and Dr Wei Jiang GOH (CEO of Craft Health) posing with CraftMake™, an in-house developed 3D printer for nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals.
Dr Lim Seng Han was a National University of Singapore (NUS) President Graduate Fellowship PhD scholar at the Department of Pharmacy, NUS. His research focused on 3D printing in the field of personalised pharmaceutical dosage forms and drug delivery. Co-founder, Dr Goh Wei Jiang, was a National University of Singapore (NUS) Graduate School of Integrative Sciences & Engineering (NGS) PhD-MBA scholar. After graduating from NUS Pharmacy in 2012, Dr Goh was then awarded the PhD-MBA double degree scholarship where he uncovered his passion for the convergence between technology and commercialisation.
Pharmacists by training, Dr Lim and Dr Goh identified a problem where patients at hospitals brought home bags of medicines with often complicated medication regimes. During their penultimate year of graduate studies, they came up with 3D printing as a solution to manage their daily medicines ̶̶ and Craft Health was born.
As first-time founders, Dr Lim and Dr Goh faced many challenges ranging from funding to adaptation of their business model. Thankfully, NUS Enterprise and GRIP have provided access to grants such as the Startup SG Founder grant, while also introducing potential investors and partners to them. Being incubated in the start-up space has also allowed Craft Health to exchange ideas with other start-ups while staying informed of the latest news in the industry. Craft Health is also under the NUS ToughLove programme, granting them access to the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Studio where they have received invaluable engineering help from Master Engineer Richard Chee.
In less than two years, Craft Health has already chalked up an impressive list of accolades:
- Feb 2019: Awarded the NUS Tough Love Grant (S$20,000) for prototyping of the 3D printer
- May 2019: Won 2nd place at the inaugural National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Cluster (NAMIC) Start-up forum.
- Oct 2019: Presented to Senior Minister and Coordinating Minister for National Security Teo Chee Hean at the NTU Innovation Centre, organised by NAMIC – showcasing their technologies for 3D printing in personalised supplements and medicines.
- Oct 2019: Presented at ITAP NAMIC Start-up Pavilion
- Nov 2019: Featured on Lianhe Zaobao - https://www.zaobao.com.sg/sme/news/story20191111-1004242.
- Dec 2019: Featured by the Straits Times as one of the first batch of start-ups under the NUS Graduate Research Programme (GRIP) - https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/education/nus-helps-phd-students-get-a-grip-on-enterprise.
Currently, Craft Health is looking at partnering with supplement companies to distribute their nutraceutical products to customers. As for their pharmaceutical products, they are looking to partner/co-develop/license their technology to pharmaceutical companies who are looking to extend patent lifespans through re-formulation exercises, combining multiple proprietary medicines in a single pill, or quick formulation prototyping such as in clinical trials.
In 2021, Craft Health plans to move to a new facility with an office space, laboratory and production lab in order to start their pilot production runs. They aim to complete 2-3 pilot studies with various stakeholders from the academic, hospital, supplement and pharmaceutical companies before scaling up. Moving forward, they will continue to build up their production line and perform various testing and validation of their product and production process.
Craft Health is currently incubated at the NUS Enterprise @Singapore Science Park facility.
To find out more about Craft Health, visit https://www.crafthealth.me/ or their LinkedIn page at https://www.linkedin.com/company/craft-health/.