Packaging/Filling: Page 129
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. March 10, 2006
Product types, cost issues, and geography factor into the outsourcing decision
Outsourcing of jobs to contract packagers (CPs) continues to be an important issue for many packagers of healthcare products. "I see continued outsourcing or contract packaging occurring due to the large number of start-up companies," believes Nancy St. Laurent, senior engineer of sterile facilities and packaging systems, Lockwood Greene. "These are mostly biotech companies, but also pharmaceutical companies."
She believes that though many CPs may have the equipment to handle existing product packaging, "that might not be the case with toxic drugs that require isolation technology, or where there are other sensitive or controlled drugs. In those cases, companies will probably build their own facility with dedicated equipment."
Dana M. Guazzo, Ph.D., president, of consulting firm RxPax LLC, adds, "In order to minimize costs, but still produce a quality product, pharmaceutical companies are increasingly relying on the specialized focus that contract packaging firms provide. Unfortunately, this doesn't always address the lack of expertise available to support companies at the developmental level." January 10, 2006
