CurifyLabs' PharmaPrinter Aurum makes automated compounding watchable — Red Dot BoB 2026

Preparing a medication for a single patient — a specific dose, allergy profile or swallowing need — is traditionally manual pharmacy work, informed by knowledge, experience and artisanal care. It is slow and hard to reproduce, and in a regulated setting every step carries safety weight. CurifyLabs, a Finnish health-technology company, set out to automate that craft with the PharmaPrinter Aurum, a pharmaceutical 3D-printing system for compounding pharmacies and hospitals.

The team's core decision was about visibility, not just speed. The machine organizes dosing, heating and mass verification into coordinated modules inside a compact unit, and the housing is transparent and UV-protected so users can watch the critical procedural phases: the movement of the syringe, the weighing process and the physical shaping of the medication, in a continuous, logical sequence. The designer, Aslak Siimes, puts it bluntly: when automation makes process steps less transparent, confidence falls — so trust is achieved through continuous perceptibility, not abstraction.

The design repositions the pharmacist from executing repetitive tasks to supervising a controlled process. Physical controls, clearly defined touchpoints, a removable heating-and-dosing unit and a syringe attachment that enables one-handed exchange keep the system simple to run and maintain, and it supports dosage forms from tablets to suppositories. The Red Dot jury gave it Best of the Best 2026, its highest distinction, praising how the machine transposes personalised, decentralised medicine production into a market-ready system.