Pharmaceutical manufacturers are under increasing pressure to shorten time-to-market, produce treatments with unpredictable product lifetimes, provide greater flexibility and, at the same time, comply with ever more stringent quality, validation, stability and traceability constraints. While this is encouraging for the contract manufacturing sector, it creates the need for even greater manufacturing flexibility.

A European Commission directive requires suppliers to incorporate information on medicines in formats suitable for blind and partially sighted people, although the associated standard has not been introduced yet. This article looks at some of the issues that will need to be addressed when the standard is adopted.

It will remain to be seen whether pharmaceutical companies will commit lock, stock and barrel to being green.

The right choice [of coding and marking technology] depends upon the company's top priorities regarding legibility, cost, speed, ease of use, cleanliness and security.

Virtual labels eliminate the need for troublesome transfer ribbons or inkjet fluids, which are inherent with traditional labelling technologies.

Although there is no global regulation or industry standard on labelling requirements, some organizations are beginning to lay down their own standards.

Adding Braille to pharmaceutical packaging should be less of a challenge with the use of Esko-Graphics' Scope solution. EC Directive 2004/27/CE requires Braille labelling and information to be provided with pharmaceutical products for human use, and companies are scrambling to implement this by 31 October.

Packaging machines for new or existing lines are easier to operate and change over than they ever were before. Today's packaging machines also accommodate a greater variety of heights, diameters, finishes, or dosage regimen counts.

This article examines automated artwork generation, which enables pharma companies to generate validated artwork for their products' packaging. Automated artwork generation is based on a complete set of data stored in an artwork management system. It enables the dynamic assembly of artwork documents, accelerates traditional processes and significantly reduces costs.