A 3D printed pill has become the first such drug to get Food and Drug Administration approval. The benefits include the ability to precisely control dosage.

The drug from Aprecia has the brand name SPRITAM and is a form of levetiracetam. It’s primarily designed as a way to control seizures in people with epilepsy.

While the printing material is the drug itself rather than a polymer such as a plastic, the basic principle of the 3D printing is the same as usual. One of the big keys to the drug is that using the 3D printer makes it much more viable to produce a pill with a specific dosage for a specific patient.

That’s in contrast to normal mass drug production where it’s usually only economic to produce a limited range of sizes. Moving away from mass production could also mean drugs could be produced nearer to patients, cutting shipping costs and times.

The other advantage of the 3D printing process, known as ZipDose, is that the printed pill can be structured to make it particularly porous. In turn, that means it can dissolve almost instantly even with only a small sip of liquid. That’s particularly useful with levetiracetam where some prescribed doses can be up to a full gram, an amount that can be uncomfortable for some patients to swallow in a traditionally-manufactured drug.

Aprecia plans to adapt the technique to work with other drugs.