Company insight
Sustainable and reusable: The labels of the future
With smart labels, one click is all it takes to change the labelling of IMPs. Frank Jäger, managing director of the Faubel Group, explains the process and how it can work to save time, money and resources.
onventional labels for IMPs are produced, shipped, applied and sent on. New labels are produced when the content is changed, for example when the recommended dosage is reduced or the expiry date extended. New labels either replace old ones or paste over parts of them, and the entire process of relabelling takes time, costs money and resources. "This is exactly the issue we wanted to address in 2013 when we started developing digital technologies for labelling IMPs," says Frank Jäger, one of three managing directors of the Faubel Group and who is also responsible for sales, marketing, product development and smart labels. "At that time, we were initially concerned with IMPs expiry dates. Now, we tend to consider the whole label content." Typically, when a clinical trial begins, IMP shelf life is measured very carefully. Stability tests also take place in laboratories after IMPs have been delivered to study centres. As soon as other deadlines can be derived from this process, the data issued on labels
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become obsolete. "Med Labels were meant to replace relabelling by allowing expiry dates to be updated," explains Jäger. This is now possible as Med Labels belong to a product group called smart labels, consisting of booklet labels, e-paper displays and RFID tags. Data is transferred to battery-less e-paper displays by passive, high-frequency RFID tags, powered by readers when updating. Readers and RFID tags interact by means of software. The label's status is reported in real time by the software, documented without gaps. "Now that Med Labels have proven themselves in trial routines for several years, we wanted to move one step further," notes Jäger.
Multilingual labelling requirements IMPs often have to be labelled in different country languages. To meet this requirement, Jäger points to the structure of Med Labels: "In Med Labels, booklet labels carry e-paper displays and RFID tags to allow multilingual IMP labelling. Over the past ten years, we have come up with the idea of featuring the
entire content of the labelling. With our new digital labels, we can alter the whole content displayed on e-papers."
As soon as a language version is stored in the software, digital labels can be updated to show the contents in the required language at any point in the supply chain. Once depots and study centres are equipped with software and readers, they can respond to changes in labelling at very short notice. The highest security standards are met because the content in the software is checked, validated and the entire process documented. For Jäger, it is obvious that "only smart labels can provide full flexibility". In addition to the security aspect, smart labels significantly reduce total updating time, a real benefit.
Labels can also be rewritten as often as needed, meaning they are always reusable. Reusability not only provides a return on initial costs, but also reduces the cost of relabelling IMPs and materials in the long run. "In conventional relabelling, resources are tied up and consumed during production, shipping and the complete turnaround. Emissions caused by this can be easily prevented by using our smart labels," Jäger describes.
All e-paper displays and RFID tags integrated into the smart labels are battery- less, meaning this energy source can be saved. Carriers of e-paper displays and RFID tags can be made of sustainable material. For Faubel's managing director, these materials belong to the company’s portfolio: "We are happy to respond to our customers' request and use recyclable films and more environmentally friendly adhesives. Some materials have already been tested and validated: digitalisation and sustainability are now inextricably linked topics." ●
Smart labels can be applied to round and flat primary packaging in different ways. Flag label variants can be used as IMP identification for small-diameter containers.
Clinical Trials Insight /
www.worldpharmaceuticals.net
www.faubel.de/en 25
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