A European Competence Framework for Industrial Pharmacy Practice in Biotechnology

The PHAR-IN (“Competences for industrial pharmacy practice in biotechnology”) looked at whether there is a difference in how industrial employees and academics rank competences for practice in the biotechnological industry. A small expert panel consisting of the authors of this paper produced a biotechnology competence framework by drawing up an initial list of competences then ranking them in importance using a three-stage Delphi process. The framework was next evaluated and validated by a large expert panel of academics (n = 37) and industrial employees (n “Research and Development”, ‘“Upstream” and “Downstream” Processing’, ; “Product development and formulation”, “Aseptic processing”, ; “Analytical methodology”, ; “Product stability”, and “Regulation”. The main area of disagreement was in the category “Ethics and drug safety” where academics ranked competences higher than did industrial employees.