Current Trends Shaping Medical Device Packaging

Have you ever struggled to open a blister-packed contact lens? Or, perhaps you’ve been able to calm a toddler’s tearful meltdown with a quickly applied SpongeBob Band-Aid — thanks to paper backing that was easy to peel off. Both scenarios illustrate how critical packaging is to the utility of health-care devices.

The medical device packaging vertical is a multi-billion-dollar industry that engages in research, development and manufacturing of the packaging that protects life-saving pharmaceuticals and medical devices. Demand for medical device packaging will grow nearly 6 percent to $25.7 billion in 2017, market research firm Freedoniapredicts. Another market research firm, Technavio, predicts growth of more than 6 percent between now and 2020.

Without safe, effective packaging, medical devices wouldn’t be possible. Pouches, clamshell packs, blister packs, glass vials and other types of containers protect all marketed medical devices, whether their end-users are consumers or health-care professionals. From contact lenses to bio-compatible implants, medical devices are often packaged in materials as high-tech and life-transforming as the devices themselves.

Polymers play a key role in medical device and pharmaceutical packaging, and Polymer Solutions’ scientists are often called on to help packaging manufacturers and device makers understand how specific polymers will affect the performance of their products. Because we come in contact with some of the sector’s most interesting challenges, we like to stay on top of developments in the medical device packaging industry. Two trends currently influencing the marketplace are of particular interest:

Counterfeit medical devices and drugs

Every year, fake drugs and medical devices claim lives and cost legitimate health-care businesses billions of dollars. In fact, the World Health Organization has estimated more than 8 percent of medical devices currently in circulation around the world are counterfeit. The internet has made it easy for counterfeiters to market their wares.

Governments, regulatory bodies, consumer advocacy groups, law enforcement agencies and legitimate medical device manufacturers and drug makers around the world currently cooperate on multiple fronts to stem the ever-growing influx of counterfeit products into the global marketplace. Counterfeit-resistant packaging is one weapon in their arsenal.

By building verification and traceability technology into packaging, researchers and medical device packaging makers hope to make it easier for health-care practitioners to differentiate between valid products and counterfeits.

Micropackaging

Nanotechnology is revolutionizing drug-delivery systems, and soon it could have the same influence on medical device and pharmaceuticals packaging. By engineering materials at the nano level, manufacturers could produce packaging with enhanced mechanical and thermal performance, and greater resistance of factors that can affect drug performance, such as exposure to light, moisture, temperature and oxygenation, market research firm Reportlinker notes. Micro packaging could also make it easier to detect and thwart tampering or counterfeiting.

Polymers are at the heart of some of the most exciting strides being made in medical device and pharmaceutical packaging. Polymer testing will continue to provide packaging manufacturers with insight into how their products might behave in the real world — and help ensure the safety, efficacy and authenticity of the world’s medical devices and pharmaceuticals.