The pandemic has caused consumers to place a greater emphasis on health and wellness than ever before. This shift in thinking sparked greater interest and reliance on pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals and the like.

The pharmaceutical labeling industry has continued to see a surge in innovation, as new capabilities have the potential to change the entire landscape. For example, a smart label can help doctors monitor the progress of their patients. This is just one example.

Label and package printing suppliers are developing new products to meet their customers’ demands for innovation. Avery Dennison has engineered a dedicated portfolio of label materials – the Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Collection – for consumer healthcare and ethical drug applications.  Products in the portfolio have been independently tested, meet a wide range of regulatory standards, and come with a robust component change notification commitment of up to 12 months. 

In addition to the core Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Collection, Avery Dennison offers several application specific portfolios, including syringe, blood bags, and cold chain and cryogenic.

Avery Dennison continually strives to the meet the “revolutionary” nature of innovation in this space. “From mobile medical apps and software that support the clinical decisions doctors make every day to artificial intelligence and machine learning, digital technology has been driving a revolution in healthcare,” says Cory Keller, senior product manager, pharmaceutical, Avery Dennison Label and Packaging Materials. “Digital health tools have the vast potential to improve our ability to accurately diagnose and treat disease and to enhance the delivery of healthcare for the individual.  Digital health technologies use computing platforms, connectivity, software, and sensors for health care and related uses. As digital health tools evolve, it likely will create new opportunities for intelligent pharma labeling solutions.”

Counterfeiting is also a massive concern for pharmaceutical brands. Avery Dennison has developed a broad portfolio of tamper-evident and anti-counterfeiting label solutions, including destructible labels, box damage films and void labels, to help curb this rising trend.

“Drug counterfeiting is a major global problem, compromising patient safety and brand reputation,” explains Keller. “Tamper-evident and void labels are the most affordable and popular solutions for pharmaceutical companies who want to protect their products from counterfeiting, although more exotic covert solutions exist, such as luminescent materials.”

Pharmaceutical labeling has been a big focus for Avery Dennison. Due to the critical nature of this segment, Avery Dennison has prioritized material procurement for pharma applications,” says Keller. “Like the broader label market, paper supply is a major challenge for pharmaceutical labeling.  Throughout the raw material supply challenges over the last several years, Avery Dennison has prioritized the Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Collection to minimize supply disruptions, given these materials are often used on critical lifesaving medicines and medical devices.” 

The company’s acquisition of Smartrac has also positioned it to continue offering technologies for this market.

“The use cases for RFID in pharma and healthcare is very compelling and leading to increased adoption,” comments Keller. “An example of RFID in use today is with Kit Check, who partnered with Avery Dennison Smartrac to add RFID tags to medication packaging going to hospitals, helping to improve patient safety by enabling more accurate tracking and authentication of medication through the entire supply chain. It also eliminates the need for cost and labor-intensive in-house medication tagging at hundreds of hospitals.”

Avery Dennison has emphasized the use of smart technology throughout the years. While not pharmaceutical specific, the company is touting atma.io, which it says is a leading connected product cloud. This technology platform has the ability to unlock the power of connected products by assigning unique digital IDs at the item level, providing end-to-end transparency by tracking, storing and managing all the events associated with each individual product — from source to consumer and beyond to enable circularity.

As with its other portfolios, sustainability has also driven product development in the pharmaceutical labeling space. As Keller notes, most large pharmaceutical companies now have 2025-2030 corporate sustainability goals, which includes a packaging element.

“Pfizer’s Sustainable Packaging Team, for instance, works with brand managers and packaging designers to minimize materials used, maximize use of recycled or renewable materials, avoid harmful materials such as PVC, source materials from certified responsibly managed forests, and optimize the number of products per package,” says Keller. “Avery Dennison’s Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Collection includes paper facestocks with Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification and film constructions that have Association of Plastics Recyclers (APR) recognition for HDPE recycling to help pharmaceutical companies achieve their sustainability objectives.”