Key takeaway: Package inserts online prove difficult for consumers to access the information they need.
At conferences, we often hear of pushes to digitalize leaflets, instructions for use, and more. There are a number of benefits to digital instructions—they’re updatable and (theoretically) widely accessible.
When we asked medical lab scientists and techs on Reddit about their packaging hurdles, here's what a couple noted about digital assets:
1. “My biggest packaging related gripe at the moment stems from package inserts moving online --
It's been a growing trend over the 15 years I've worked in the lab to see package inserts, instructions for use, user manuals, and other documentation move online. I don't have a problem with this, and I fully see how it reduces waste, but any manufacturer who puts that information behind an access restricted log in system deserved to be flogged in my opinion.
If we need access to a package insert and it's online, only to get online and find out that we need to create an account that then takes days to get approved as a ‘verified customer’ or whatever, we essentially don't have access to that package insert, and with the growing number of manufacturers moving to online inserts it's just not possible to make sure that there's always a person on shift who has access to the information for every possible manufacturer. Either print the insert in the package or make them available without a log in (or with a log in that doesn't have to be approved before accessing data).”
—u/dwarfbrynic
They later added:
“I think manufacturers just assume everybody is going to have a customer log in already (or, thinking less charitably, want to force people to make one) but it's not always possible to make a log in for every manufacturer for every new employee. This either creates a situation where people who are off shift are getting called to see if they have a log in or else we end up having to wait for access to be approved.
It's a bit sore for me at the moment because we literally just had an issue accessing blood bank package inserts because of a manufacturer moving to eIFUs [electronic instructions for use] and nobody had a log in since we hadn't needed it before. It took nearly a week for them to approve access to the document library.
I'm glad to actually get the opportunity to give feedback though - often working on the production end you see things like this and just figure there's nothing you can do about it. The manufacturer is going to do it however they want and you're just stuck dealing with it.”
2. “I completely agree with the comment about online package insterts [sic]. It takes 5 different pages to get where I can type in the lot number. If they’re going to be online can they at least print the last time the insert was revised on the box/bottles/something?”
—u/CampNo2224
Meanwhile, some on the manufacturer’s side say there’s still much work to do in the realm of eIFUs for medical devices themselves (Medical Device eIFUs: Hurdles to Overcome).
Last year, Tiffany McIntire, principal human factors engineer at Roche Pharmaceuticals, noted while Europe as a whole is closer than the U.S. to eliminating the folded paper leaflet in favor of a digital option, she said QR codes—which have made many headlines for their usability—may not have come quite as far as people think. “In the COVID situation, you would have expected that we were using more QR codes in the U.S.,” she said. “I went to the Human Factors Ergonomics Society last year, and there were some statistically significant studies where over 50% of people didn't know what a QR code was, didn't know how it worked. They thought they had to have an app on their phone in order to open it.”
Beyond consumer/patient acceptance, she said there’s work to be done among brand owners themselves. “I think it would take a new department of 120 plus people to be able to actually realize digital leaflets. If you look at the current processes that we're doing right now, the maintenance behind them, the updates, the cybersecurity, all of that for the different affiliates, it requires a lot of manpower,” McIntire explained.
