That’s just what MeadWestvaco Healthcare Packaging did in pharmaceuticals. Research told the company that consumers want three improvements in medication packaging:
• Better child resistance.
• Easier opening and closing, especially for older hands.
• Assistance in complying with a drug regimen.
MeadWestvaco has anticipated pharmaceutical companies’ needs by designing a package that can be customized according to pill size or dosage frequency. “We looked at what’s important to the pharmaceutical companies’ customer, and we took this package to their key decision-makers,” says Gene Giordano, vice president at MeadWestvaco Healthcare Packaging. “We are looking for companies that market drugs that meet this type of packaging requirement.”
The package is a two-piece, extrusion-coated paperboard-and-blister combination called Dosepak™. The outer carton is SBS paperboard and the inner piece is MeadWestvaco EasySeal Plus bleached paperboard. The blister is sealed into the fold-over inner piece. By depressing a button—a die cut on the outer carton—the locking mechanism releases, enabling the inner piece to slide in and out of the outer carton.
The inner piece holds the medication in blisters. The fold-over card can be customized for different medication regimens, but for a seven-day, twice-daily prescription, the card segments pills in color-coded rows labeled “day” and “night.”
Besides providing ample “real estate” for branding, the carton carries a child-safety rating of F=1 from the Food and Drug Administration, and it acts as the product delivery system and reminds consumers when they took their last dosage, Giordano says.
See the story that goes with this sidebar: Optimizing paperboard’s value equation
