Avery Dennison, Schreiner MediPharm, and PragmatIC Semiconductor have collaborated to use NFC technology to extend smart packaging to unit-level daily medicines, significantly improved patient safety and experience.
NFC technology has many advantages in smart packaging applications. It can be used for anti-counterfeiting authentication, security authentication, end-to-end tracking, and reordering.
As far as medicine is concerned, it not only allows patients to connect to easy-to-read instructions, but also to video/audio guides, hotlines, social media support, and even to their attending doctor or nurse.
In the past, limited by the cost of traditional NFC inlays and chips, this function was only used for high-value (or high-risk) products.
Now, with the joint efforts of Schreiner MediPharm, PragmatIC and Avery Dennison, these functions can be applied to cost-sensitive daily medical drugs.
The core of these cost-effective smart solutions is Avery Dennison’s NFC inlay, which includes the NFC chip of the ConnectIC series produced by PragmatIC.
Because these flexible chips are thinner than human hair, and they are strong and durable, which made them very suitable for small-sized items, which provides an ideal solution for adding unique identification to cost-sensitive products (such as small syringes or vials).
Schreiner MediPharm uses Avery Dennison inlay with PragmatIC chips to expand its product portfolio.
“For Schreiner MediPharm, solving customer- and application-specific problems is of particular importance. The partnership with Avery Dennison and PragmatIC enables unmet needs to be served in order to support users and to avoid medication errors for a much wider range of products. Thus, we can contribute to enhanced product safety and support patient centricity at a much larger scale”, said Stefan Wiedemann, Senior Director Strategic Marketing and Business Development at Schreiner MediPharm.
“This partnership illustrates how our ground-breaking ConnectIC product line is set to accelerate the deployment of RFID-based digital solutions in the healthcare sector,” commented Scott White, CEO of PragmatIC. “We are really pleased to see adoption of our technology by leading global suppliers like Schreiner MediPharm and Avery Dennison and look forward to working closely with both of them to improve patient outcomes around the world.”
“We have always believed that integrating RFID into pharmaceutical products helps improve patient safety by enabling more accurate tracking and authentication of medication through the entire supply chain, with the goal of reducing error rates to nearly zero. With our new low-cost inlays based on ConnectIC FlexICs and our partnership with PragmatIC and Schreiner MediPharm, we help to enhance patient safety and experiences through novel smart packaging applications”, said Francisco Melo, Vice President and General Manager, Avery Dennison Intelligent Labels.