Smart Design: rethinking packaging

How electronic packs for pharmaceuticals work with mobile IT to improve patient adherence to medication regimens

Smart Designs is a book edited by Philip Breedon, where the first chapter was co-authored by James Woudhuysen and Peter Rivers. Here is the Abstract followed by a link to read further samples from the FULL version on Google Books or buy online.

Indictments of waste, and distaste for the packaging of consumer goods, are widespread in modern life. Yet in England, at least, households account for less than a third of overall waste, and household waste – like the industrial and commercial kinds – is actually in decline. In addition, the potentialities of packaging as a force for progress are too often ignored. Electronic packaging could improve the way users of prescription drugs take their medicines. With an ageing population taking more and more varied kinds of drugs, patient adherence to medication regimens is a growing social and economic issue. Linked to mobile IT, electronic packaging can, in principle, do much to ensure that medical patients wind up taking the right drugs at the right times.

The paper reviews four examples of electronic packaging, and goes on to situate them in the context of mobile health (mHealth) – mobile telephony applications that prompt patients, each time they take medicine, to report their symptoms very simply and, if necessary, receive advice back from doctors. Together, reporting adherence and symptoms can enable prescribers to build up a rich picture of the effectiveness of each prescription issued. Doses or medication can be changed, or medication withdrawn, using real intelligence about patients. The dual approach outlined here can also reduce the problems that arise with the use of multiple medications by a patient. Innovation in the way in which prescription drugs are packaged could do a lot for society. This paper explores the potential of linking the electronic packaging of medicines to mobile IT, as well as the attitudinal and likely regulatory barriers that could impede progress in this domain.

---

To open read more of this essay, please click on this Rethinking packaging link.