Time for a dose of innovation?

Few innovative packaging categories have experienced so little reinvention or change over the last few decades than pharmaceuticals – especially in the field of prescription drugs. While other packaging categories have enjoyed radical overhauls there’s little difference between packs of pharmaceutical products from the 1950s and 1960s and the packs of today. Indeed the stark minimalism of pharmaceutical packs is so striking that artists like Damien Hirst have turned them into gallery pieces.

Yet pharmaceutical packaging needn’t be stuck in the dark ages. Given the key role packaging plays in informing consumers about the contents and the risks involved with taking any prescription or over the counter drugs, there’s an opportunity for modern pharmaceutical packaging to be covered with clever info graphics and all manner of cutting edge technological innovations.

So why hasn’t the industry gone down this route to date? And what more could pharmaceutical companies and their packaging providers be doing to help consumers better understand the drugs they are taking?

One of the key reasons that pharmaceutical innovative packaging has resisted change over the years is largely due to legislative pressures, according to Gerard Harford, managing director of Contego. “Legislation defines elements, such as minimum font sizes for design and ease of readability, while child resistant packaging legislation will steer the functional requirements of the pack,” explains Harford. “Over the years innovative packaging has had to encompass all these changes so the leaflet and pack sizes have increased to accommodate the increase in information.”