Working together to stimulate innovation

The Faraday Packaging Partnership gives companies with an interest 'beyond tomorrow' the opportunity to access the expertise residing in the UK's academic institutions

In a relentless search for innovation, companies are turning increasingly to academia to develop multidisciplinary solutions to help them grow their business. With an effective integrated network of academic expertise supported by £100m of funding, the Faraday Packaging Partnership offers a unique opportunity for the pharmaceutical industry to tap into higher levels of creativity and innovation.In a relentless search for innovation, companies are turning increasingly to academia to develop multidisciplinary solutions to help them grow their business. With an effective integrated network of academic expertise supported by £100m of funding, the Faraday Packaging Partnership offers a unique opportunity for the pharmaceutical industry to tap into higher levels of creativity and innovation.

Designing packaging that is easy to open could give manufacturers a competitive advantage. Dr Belinda Winder, head of the industrial psychology and packaging research group based in the University of Sheffield's Department of Mechanical Engineering, explains: 'Opening packaging is especially serious for people with limited strength, such as the elderly or disabled.'

decreasing strength

Muscle function declines with age: elderly people may therefore find it more difficult physically to open products. The opening strength of adults also decreases with age - an average 70 year-old may retain less than 70% of the grip strength of a 20 year old (DTI, 1999). These factors, together with the increased risk of degenerative illness such as arthritis, put the elderly at a disadvantage when opening child-resistant closures (CRCs).

Tests using adults to determine opening effectiveness are optional, not compulsory for the BS EN 862 regulation (blister packs). The BS EN 28317 regulation requires a panel of adults to be included in the test procedure, but a panel of older adults is optional. This puts CRCs at a disadvantage because older adults are the largest users of pharmaceutical packaging. They are also the ones who experience the most difficulty in opening the packaging and are therefore most likely

to put their pills in a non-child safe container that allows children access to the contents.

In her studies Dr Winder has already found that the elderly are more likely than any other group to read instructions on how to open packaging. However, the size of font in which such instructions are printed is often too small for them to read comfortably.

The Sheffield team is studying how people set about opening various types of pack and how they use the various cues presented by the packaging. 'We video people who are presented with a product to try to tease out precisely what is important to them in deciding how to go about opening the package and to document any problems that they have.

'We also like to conduct our research in real-life settings where possible, so that when we are asking people about packaging, they are in the right frame of mind to give us high quality information.'

Dr Winder believes that her team has unrivalled expertise in researching the user-friendliness of packaging. 'We have a large database of volunteer subjects, to which we are constantly adding, and we have an impressive body of research data and experience in the field,' she says. 'A company that is seen to design packaging which is easy to open could be seen as caring and innovative.'

In the design of CRCs several assumptions are usually made about a child's capability to open a container. These include the generalisation that young children cannot perform two different motions at the same time (i.e. pushing down and turning simultaneously). However, children continue to die or become ill after ingesting toxic substances each year. This suggests that the design and testing of CRCs needs to be changed as children are gaining access to toxic chemicals, despite the use of closures intended to prevent this.

cognitive solution

The industrial psychology group of the University of Sheffield has been involved in the design of a new CRC. In collaboration with Factory Design, of London, the industrial psychology group developed a set of original designs based on finding a solution to the CRC problem so that CRCs are physically easy but cognitively difficult to open.

This means that all adults, even those with disabilities such as arthritis, should be able to open and use the CRCs without difficulty, but that children will not be able to open them. Such designs should eliminate the problems the elderly frequently experience, relating to wrist or hand stiffness, as the closures will not require a high level of grip strength to open. These designs should also help to reduce further the rate of poisonings, since older people should no longer find the need to decant the medication into alternative non-CRC containers.

The designs are in the process of being patented. Each is based around the premise that it should be physically easy to open and elderly friendly. Once each model has been patented the designs will be developed into prototypes and thrown open to industrial interest. The utilisation of the models as CRCs should help lower accident rates from poisonings and raise the abilities of elderly consumers to open CRC packaging.

Just as nanotechnology is becoming an important feature of drug delivery developments, new materials manufactured using nanotechnology are finding applications in pharmaceutical packaging because of their ability to respond effectively to environmental stimuli such as light, heat or changes in gas or pH.

Packs that are able to change the condition of their own contents, activating responsive pores, valves or barriers to optimise product shelf life and quality, are now a reality being developed by Professor Tony Ryan and his research team at the University of Sheffield. Packaging too is playing a more active role in the dispensing of its own contents and in protecting itself against tampering or abuse.

What is evolving is a 'molecular toolbox' that can be used to build different characteristics into packaging materials. For example, a polymer layer grown on the surface of a porous packaging film can be designed to cover or uncover the holes in response to specific environmental conditions thus creating 'packaging with pores'. A change in light conditions could, for example, trigger valves within the packaging to open. Indeed, valves with opposite polarity to allow two way flows have already been tried and tested.

smart materials

Research inspired by muscles is focused on the introduction of chemical energy to produce molecules that change shape. Changes in pH, for instance, can cause a molecule to expand by up to one hundred times. These responsive molecules can be harnessed to power responsive features within the packaging.

'Smart' gels that expand and contract are already in use delivering doses of insulin in response to glucose variations - and the good news is that these reactive gels are relatively inexpensive.

The throbbing effect of gels that collapse twice as fast as they expand when subjected to changes in environmental conditions can result in a force that can be used. The same principles can produce actuators in the polymer that can expand in one, two or even three dimensions. Future developments aim to produce molecular devices that swim against a chemical gradient to a recognised site to deliver its contents. The implications for medical packaging concerned with the targeted delivery of expensive drugs or nutrients are immense.

The Faraday Packaging Partnership

Following a successful application by the Universities of Leeds Sheffield and York in collaboration with Pira International, the Faraday Packaging Partnership was one of the four initial Faraday partnerships awarded funds by the EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council). Formed in 1998, it was set up to "support a new and deeper understanding of the science underpinning the future of the packaging industry through a programme of research, technology transfer and training, and for this new understanding to provide the basis for sustainable commercial competitiveness." It offers members the advantage of participation in commercially orientated projects and a commitment to encouraging a two-way flow of technology and skilled people between universities and industry. By creating a unique window on opportunities arising from UK universities, the Partnership aims to inspire new thinking, achieve new perspectives and provide a clear vision for the packaging sector, helping to build a blueprint for an exciting and profitable future.