Positive pharmaceutical labelling

All medical products should be accurately labelled with adequate information and instructions. One of the key questions is space. How can more space for text/pictures be created without changing the size of the product?

The information on a pharmaceutical product must be noticed, read, understood, and acted upon. But there are three areas that continue to cause frustration:

The text on labels is too small to read.
There is not enough information.
There are no language alternatives.

To truly serve patients and healthcare providers, drug-labelling information must be accessible. Pharmacists, physicians, nurses, patients and other healthcare consumers need access to information that is both current and easy to read. Some institutions and pharmaceutical manufacturers are specifying larger fonts to accommodate visually impaired and elderly end-users.

Multi Page Labels has produced a solution where information on several languages, large fonts and pictures or diagrams is provided. To ensure that the information stays with the product, inserts are replaced with labels. And by using labels it is also possible to reduce the amount of packaging used, which in turn reduces cost and has a positive influence on the environment.

Customer solutions

The Multi Page Label is one of the key products in the Stralfors product portfolio to the pharmaceutical industry. Stralfors has defined three examples where the label serves its customers well:

Customer A – language alternative. One of the customer activities is based on clinical trials. The customer need was to reduce the number of labels used and to have one label with texts in different languages (one language per page). With a multi-paged solution they can now use the same label regardless of country. Where they once needed several different labels, now all labels are integrated into one self-adhesive Multi Page Label.
Customer B – cost-reducing alternative. Stralfors was able to present a new solution for this pharmaceutical company, which was using a solution that consisted of placing the Multi Page Label on a base label. The base label turned out to be unnecessary. Stralfors presented the Multi Page Label without base label, which reduced the amount of material used and thereby the price of the labels.
Customer C – productivity increase. Customer C is applying two labels on each side of a vial (opposite each other). They want to increase the productivity and one way of doing this is to go from two labels on the product into one Multi Paged Label. Instead of having to apply two labels, the customer applies only one with the same amount of information on the product. The main advantage of this three-page label is the time-saving factor that will increase productivity.

Increasing demand

The Multi Page Label is becoming increasingly popular and large investments are made within this area. This year €1.1m were spent by Stralfors for this specific activity.

Stralfors has one of the most flexible and efficient production lines in Europe, which means that the company is ready for the increasing demand in this segment. Multi Page Labels are normally produced in two pieces of material. One recent innovation is a patented solution made in one piece of material that avoids cross contamination. More exciting Multi Page Label solutions will follow as a result of the company’s strong focus on R&D. Stralfors Pharmakett®, the dedicated pharma section, has a wide experience of delivering marking solutions to the European pharmaceutical industry. At the Pharmakett facilities in Gothenburg and in Basel there are Vision Systems.

Pharma Control ensures the quality of the self-adhesive labels produced. The quality of the produced labels is 100 per cent guaranteed and will follow the PS 9000 in the near future. End

To truly serve patients and healthcare providers, drug-labelling information must be accessible

Company profile

Stralfors’ core business is to deal with information transfer combined with physical logistic services. The group operates in 12 countries. For more information, visit: www.stralfors.com

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