Despite offering numerous benefits throughout the supply chain, the smart packaging market has yet to take off for flexible and printed electronics. RFID has been the most successful use of smart packaging technology in terms of connecting customers to the brands and allowing retailers to better handle inventory. The ability to authenticate is also an important benefit.
“There is the continued use of smart packaging to enhance direct-to-consumer marketing, resulting in more targeted brand promotion and better consumer experience,” said PragmatIC CEO Scott White. “But increasingly the focus seems to be on other objectives such as sustainability (e.g. improving recycling outcomes), provenance (authentication and supply chain traceability), and operational improvements (inventory management and supply chain efficiency).”
“New printed sensor innovations are key for brand owners and we expect much more of this will develop in the retail environment,” John Hannafin, global product manager, Sun Chemical Advanced Materials, said. “Item-level tagging at the retail level, consumer data acquisition and analytics will combine with innovations to become part of the system contained within the retail space itself to drive the consumer.”
“The term smart packaging can encompass a number of things, including active and intelligent packaging – however, since we are discussing connected packaging, I will place the focus there,” said Andrew Wong, manager, market development for Jones Healthcare Group. “Connected packaging gives consumers a physical touchpoint (the package), which makes it incredibly easy to access relevant information (e.g., is this authentic? Where did this product come from? Where can I reorder this product?) or initiate relevant experiences (e.g., a support call, contests, games, adherence tracking and more).
Wong noted that for brands, that physical touchpoint in a consumer’s home is becoming more and more valuable each day.
“Electronic connected packaging allows brands to learn about their consumers and products, and accrue this data throughout a product’s lifecycle,” added Wong. “There are also ways for brands to implement electronic connected packaging into their own internal workflows to improve supply chain visibility, efficiency and reduce waste.”
Using printed electronics in areas such as healthcare, such as monitoring blister packs to see if medicine is being taken, is a promising area.
“In healthcare, about two million smart blister packs have been used,” Raghu Das, IDTechEx CEO, reported.
“There continues to be a lot of smart packaging innovation being driven by the pharma industry,” Hannafin noted. “For example, new products are being introduced online which detect when and whether a medicine has been taken. These products drive compliance and improve patient outcomes.
“Anti-tamper and anti-counterfeiting protection protect customers and suppliers from manipulation during the entire logistic chain. We see also a growing interest in smart blister packs for pharmaceutical applications, supporting the patient in compliance,” said Klaus Hecker, managing director of the OE-A.
“Beyond NFC, we are seeing a sharp rise in interest from the pharmaceutical industry, particularly for solutions that can address medication adherence,” Wong observed.
“One of the fascinating learnings for me is the fact there is no standard metric for pharmacies to track adherence information,” Wong noted. “In fact, when pharmacies speak of adherence, they are usually referring to when a patient picks up their medication, but actually have no way to know if a patient has actually taken their medication. While the Morisky Medication Adherence Scale exists and is widely cited in research settings, this serves as a survey-based score – therefore, measurement has limitations related to recall bias and the fact patients feel pressure to deliver acceptable responses to elicit a positive response from their healthcare provider.”
“I’m currently most excited about our work surrounding printed electronics in packaging for the purposes of tracking medication adherence,” Wong noted. “At Jones Healthcare Group, we have been able to use a proprietary process to print conductive traces of ink onto paperboard. When we print these conductive patterns over blister packaging for medication, they serve as break sensors that can detect when a blister cavity is opened or closed.
“By connecting this disposable blister pack to a reusable transmitting device (basically a cell phone without a screen), we can monitor and transmit in real-time whether a patient has removed medication from the package,” Wong added. “We have pilot tested this solution in Europe, and are currently running live patient trials with pharmacy chains in the United States.
“Today, we believe the stage is set for connected packaging technologies like NFC or printed sensors to make a commercial impact in the packaging market,” Wong concluded.
