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Watson Laboratories’ Glipizide Key.In package won the 2007 Compliance Package of the Year award from the Healthcare Compliance Packaging Council . The package, a unique carded wallet, is manufactured by Nosco for Watson Laboratories. The pack functions with a removable key card that must be inserted into a lock in order to access the blisters within.
Two pharmaceuticals and one medical device package were among those to win the Institute of Packaging Professionals’ 2007 AmeriStar Awards. In the Pharmaceutical and Drug category, Mylan Pharmaceuticals chose MeadWestvaco Health & Beauty Packaging’s Shellpak (shown) to answer Wal-Mart's challenge to its generic prescription drug producers to provide cost-effective, patient-adherence packaging.
Synchronized lines, rather than individual pieces of equipment, will be a focus of pharmaceutical manufacturers, predicts PMMI’s Ben Miyares. In this exclusive Q&A interview with Healthcare Packaging, Miyares addresses multiple healthcare packaging-related issues, including mechatronics and robotics, which, he says, "have the potential to transform the development of packaging equipment." He also looks at sustainability, packaging equipment purchase considerations, E-machinery, and counterfeiting topics.
Certain types of cancer are becoming "chronic" diseases and call for changes in packaging, according to Dr. Joseph Gligorov, an oncologist in France. He made these remarks February 6, 2008, at Pharmapack in Paris, France, during a session titled, "Cancer Treatment: The Emerging Role of Packaging." While cancer rates are growing around the world, from 10 million cases diagnosed in 2000 to 15 million projected in 2020, many of these are due to the aging population, people who may also suffer from a variety of other ailments. More than 650 drugs to fight cancer are currently in the pipeline.
Pharmaceutical firms seek packaging line improvements to cut costs, biologics present packaging challenges, and medical device growth is driven by aging baby boomers. These treatment advances bode well for the healthcare/life sciences packaging community. Packaging materials need to offer protection from point of manufacture to the “last mile” where healthcare products reach a patient. Packaging materials must provide barriers for moisture, oxygen, light and heat, and they may include overt and/or covert security measures to combat counterfeiting and diversion. Equipment will need to package products more efficiently, be validatable and versatile.
Healthcare Packaging and Packaging World, producers of the Pharmaceutical Packaging Forum, and Ipack-Ima Spa, organizers of Pharmintech, announce a cooperative agreement in which Healthcare Packaging and Packaging World will offer promotional support to Ipack-Ima Spa, increasing the visibility for their Italian trade event, Pharmintech, to the U.S. pharmaceutical market. Pharmintech, held every three years in Italy, will next take place May 12th -14th, 2010 in Bologna, Italy.
A call for RFID pilots was heard from the California Board of Pharmacy during the 4th Annual EPC Connection Conference & Exhibition held in early October in Rosemont, IL. Judi Nurse, supervising inspector of the California Board of Pharmacy, noted that the goal through electronic tagging is to prevent counterfeit drugs from entering the supply chain in California. "The problem has been the inability to track the source of counterfeit drugs," she said.
Although the use of radio-frequency identification is in its early stage, “RFID holds great potential for the healthcare industry, and the adoption of the technology is expected to increase significantly owing to the benefits it offers.” That’s according to RFID Opportunities in Healthcare in the U.S., a new $3,900 market-research report from Kalorama . This year, the RFID market in the U.S. healthcare industry is estimated to be about $297 million, says the report. By 2012, the market’s value is forecast to be $3.1 billion.
Packaging Hall of Fame inductee Edward J. Bauer, investigative reporter and award-winning author Katherine Eban, and Joint Equipment Transition Team (JETT) Chairman Jim John are among the speakers scheduled to make presentations at the upcoming Pharmaceutical Packaging Forum (PPF) 2008. Produced by Healthcare Packaging and Packaging World magazines, the event will be held on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 at The Rittenhouse Hotel in Philadelphia, the same venue that hosted the initial PPF March 29, 2007.
Providing quality healthcare while holding the line on costs continues to be a priority throughout much of the life sciences industry. Watching expenses is a critical task at Group Health as well, where the company’s Seattle facility handles mail-order prescriptions and serves as a central fill location for its 26 pharmacies located in both Washington and Idaho. Since adding a Maverick Enterprises UPM B/T (Universal Packaging Machine with Bottle and Tote infeed), Group Health has reduced its labor needs, improved efficiency within its confined 7,000 sq’ area, and readied itself to handle growing sales volume. In turn, those benefits help to hold down Group Health member costs.
Pharmaceutical innovation and development represents an important aspect of the Latin American economy, with sales of US$24 billion in 2005, up 18.5-percent from 2004. Mexico, Brazil and Argentina are three largest markets in the region, and were responsible for more than 80-percent of the region’s sales in 2005. That’s according to InfoAmericas, a conductor of research and business intelligence across Latin America and the Caribbean. In 2005, the combined annual growth rate of the top seven markets in the region reached 7-percent.
The Food & Drug Administration’s new current good manufacturing practices (CGMPs) for dietary supplements are rich in requirements related to packaging and labeling. A decade in the making, the CGMP rule, compliance with which will be phased in according to size of company, sets minimum standards for assembly-line contact surfaces, packaging and labeling equipment, inspection of packaging received from suppliers, relations with third-party packagers, personnel hygiene on the packaging line and much more, all within the context of forcing the industry—some of which may already be in compliance—to adopt the kind of CGMPs that the FDA has prescribed for food and drugs.
Market demand for pre-filled syringes is growing faster than suppliers can build capacity, with project lead times pushing 35 months. This fact was revealed during a Q&A session following a presentation on trends in biotechnology at Optima Pharma Group’s open house, held in Germany in June.
At this year’s Interphex conference and exhibition event in New York, the Healthcare Compliance Packaging Council (HCPC) selected its 2006 Compliance Package of the Year awards. The PocketPak (shown) earned package of the year honors. Reportedly used in England by Boots Pharmacies, PocketPak uses a patented design developed by Burgopak and Structural Graphics.
Three trends are emerging that warrant more attention. One is sustainability, which is all the rage in the general packaging press. But with all the demands already placed on a pharmaceutical or medical device package, do we have to be earth-friendly too?
At the Pharmaceutical Packaging Forum, Attorney Eric F. Greenberg revealed key Food and Drug Administration issues pertaining to healthcare packaging. Among them were drug safety, inspections, cGMPs, labeling of prescription and OTC drugs, and how a unique coalition came together last year to lobby for more FDA funding.
The Freedonia Group forecasts that sales demand for high-visibility packaging in the pharmaceutical and medical markets will advance 7.9% annually to $1.9 billion by 2010. The organization refers to high-visibility packaging as packaging that allows consumers to see the product through the packaging. These include windowed boxes and bags, carded blister packs, skin packaging, and interlocking containers.
The Flexible Packaging Association awarded a Special Citation for Social Responsibility for a multilayer foil-laminated pouch that allows HIV-positive mothers in Kenya, Africa to give their newborn babies a dose of Nevirapine oral suspension within 24 hours of birth, when the fast-acting drug is most effective in reducing mother-to-child transmission of HIV-1. The award was announced February 28 during the FPA’s 2007 Achievement Awards at the association’s annual meeting in Aventura, FL.
Half the 1,200 clinical trials conducted by a dozen of the largest U.S. pharmaceutical companies were conducted offshore in 2005. So says a report from management consultancy A.T. Kearney, “Make Your Move: Taking Clinical Trials to the Best Location.” The report cites China as the best bet for outsourcing clinical trials.
Electronic compliance monitoring packaging has been around for years, yet many pharmaceutical companies are unable to quantify the return on investment of smart packaging.
Electronic compliance monitoring packaging has been around for years, yet many pharmaceutical companies are unable to quantify the return on investment of smart packaging. Pundits who predict the future of packaging often talk bout the rise of smart packaging. What exactly is a smart package? One U.K. Web site cites examples such as time-temperature food quality labels, self-heating or self-cooling containers—any package enhanced to deliver additional consumer convenience.
Whippany, NJ-based healthcare contract packager TestPak unveils its child-resistant, senior-friendly line at an October open house. By the end of this year, says TestPak's Bill Eveleth, child-resistant blister packs produced on this new packaging line will be sold commercially in developmental quantities for prescription applications.
I recently paid a visit to a representative of a supplier of healthcare packaging materials who showed me sophisticated "Smart" packages--this particular application was for clinical trials.
A macrolide azithromycin chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) Phase III study is using Med-ic RFID smart sensors embedded in blister packs. Sponsored by the National Institute of Health, the multiyear, double-blind study will enroll more than 1,100 patients at 10 clinical centers across the country.
Creating compliance-prompting packaging is no easy task. Anderson Packaging uses the following practices to help its pharmaceutical customers.
The need for compliance—or regimen—packaging, as well as packaging that combines two or more drugs, will be acute as the massive baby boomer generation ages and requires more prescription medications.
• The package’s structural design has to be intuitive, easy to open and operate.
• The print needs to be large enough and offer enough visual contrast to be read.
• If the package is a multipack that meters out multiple medications, its contents have to be filled in the correct sequence in the package. Failure in any of these steps could result in packaging that the patient can’t read or open, or—worse—medicines being consumed in a regimen other than what the physician prescribed, or not at all.
“Most of our customers use their own design agency,” notes Justin Schroeder, Anderson Packaging’s marketing and business development director, but with its own in-house package design team. “We can also come up with the design concept,” Schroeder says.
For years, the Healthcare Compliance Packaging Council and others have touted unit-dose packaging as a way to improve patient compliance, compared with traditional medicine bottles. In fact, Ben Miyares, vice president of industry relations with the Packaging Machinery Manufacturers Institute (PMMI), predicted the end of drug bottles.
