Christopher Waterhouse
Idi Pac Ltd, Petersfield, United Kingdom

Abstract

Can Pharmaceutical treatment adherence, arguably the largest therapeutic area and biggest issue facing the Pharma industry be addressed through innovative packaging solutions – what technologies can be used to influence behaviour, improving adherence to medication regimes and thus improving outcomes?
In this article we will discuss the size of the opportunity for the industry and how, through packaging; improved structural designs and interaction with smart technologies, can improve the patient experience with benefits for Governments and manufacturers alike.

For the pharmaceutical industry, the overwhelming challenge for 2018 remains the delivery and ongoing implementation of product and production changes coupled with the handling of increased data flows and management that are required to meet the deadlines for serialisation and authentication required by the Falsified Medicines Directive (FMD) on a global and perhaps fragmented platform.

The FMD legislation will, it is suggested, support the reduction of dangerous, counterfeit pharmaceutical products in circulation within the wider pharmaceutical market. There is however another key challenge, a challenge that the pharmaceutical and health industry has been wrestling to address. Affecting product effectiveness, patient outcomes and business sales, namely medicinal non-compliance or as some would label it patient adherence. Statistics suggest that in the order of 50% of all scripts generated do not reach the patient or to put it in context some $700bn plus of sales are lost to the Pharmaceutical industry! Taking this to its logical conclusion it would suggest that patient adherence is the largest therapeutic area, however it receives but a fraction of the R& ...