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Nurses, medical pros help drive device packaging improvements

Medical device companies use input from nurses and professionals to develop packaging that opens easier and works harder in the field.

Nurses med device input
Nurses med device input

Paying attention to nurses when they describe and evaluate the packaging they use can pay off for medical device firms in the package development process.

At Medtronic Spinal and Biologics, for example, manager of sterile packaging development Chris Bagozzi says, “We work with nurses, surgeons, and other healthcare professionals in various capacities. In some instances, we gain feedback from nurses and surgeons during cadaver lab sessions, surgeries, and focus groups. We also collect feedback in the form of surveys while attending conferences such as AORN (Assn. of Perioperative Registered Nurses) and NASS (North American Spine Society). We try to gain feedback whenever opportunities arise.

“As an example,” he continues, “the outer case currently utilized to house nonsterile implant and instrument sets was the result of collaboration with nurses. The design was created based on input from various Medtronic Spinal packaging engineers along with input provided from focus groups consisting of nurses and hospital sterilization service personnel.”

Philip Dahlin, senior manager of sustainability for the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, points out, “For medical devices, we definitely do reach out to healthcare professionals to help design the packaging. We have to balance greener packaging with the needs of nurses and surgeons to open it and maintain a sterile field. We have surgical training centers throughout the globe. They bring in surgeons and nurses to train and test the products. It’s not only the device functionality, but we test packaging and how they open it, how they maintain a sterile field, and we get their feedback and their ideas.”

Jason Strachota, a packaging development engineer II with Smith & Nephew, Inc.’s Advance Surgical Devices Div., notes, “Our packaging engineering group actively engages our sales organization to get feedback on new design concepts and any ideas for improvement with existing packages. We also use our customer service data to gauge feedback on certain designs that may be more susceptible to customer dissatisfaction.

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