Intricately folded leaflet saves drug company time, money and labor

William Makely

Pharmaceutical products present a variety of special handling challenges, ranging from maintaining sterile packaging conditions to ensuring that the finished package contains what it says it does. Rosemont Pharmaceutical met one such challenge with a unique leaflet.

Government regulations mandate that certain prescription medications - including those containing hormones, like Rosemont's medroxyprogesterone acetate tablets - be accompanied by specific information for both the pharmacist and the patient taking it. Rules also concern the readability of these leaflets.

For years, Rosemont used two leaflets: one for consumers, placed inside the bottle, and one for pharmacists, tipped onto the bottle cap. As the use of bar coding became more prevalent (and convenient) as a way to confirm that the proper information was included with each package, it was obvious that the consumer instructions could not remain inside the bottle, with verification being so labor intensive. Rosemont asked its leaflet supplier Mini Graphics: Can we produce a single, perforated leaflet that could be applied to the cap, to be separated later by the pharmacist into patient inserts?

Worse Case Scenario

Here was the challenge: The required information for the pharmacist alone takes up 10 pages of double-spaced text on a computer. The consumer information fills another page. Since Rosemont supplies the tablets to pharmacists in bulk in 50-, 100- and 250-count bottles, at standard dosage, a pharmacist can dispense as many as nine consumer prescriptions from the largest bottle size.

To make a single leaflet practical, it would have to be printed with the patient information nine times (the eventual number was 10, since the inserts laid out in double rows), which is equivalent to another 10 pages of text.

Given the limitations on type size, leading and more, a sheet containing 107 square inches of 30-pound Pharmaceutical Mylite paper would have to be folded down into a leaflet measuring 1 1/8 inches square that could be handled by line-speed equipment for tipping.

As a small specialty printer dedicated to pharmaceutical labels and inserts, Mini Graphics was familiar with the informational leaflet requirements. As a supplier to Rosemont, it knew the company's equipment. The challenge was to solve the intricacies of the fold. The solution came through the time-honored practice of educated trial and error.

Today, leaflets are printed and perforated by Mini Graphics, cut on a guillotine knife trimmer and folded. A spot of glue in the last fold holds the leaflet closed through production and shipping. Leaflets are delivered to Rosemont in sleeves, ready for loading into the rotary pick-and-place machine from MGS Machine that tips them on.

Results of the changeover - introduced in January 1998 - are positive. Eliminating hand insertion of the consumer leaflet has increased line speed and reduced labor costs (total cost comparisons will not be run until the line has been in operation for a while). The new external leaflet is topped by a bar code so Rosemont can electronically verify that the proper information is accompanying the medication being packaged.

Less immediate but equally valuable gains are in the area of receiving the leaflets. Having the single leaflet means less receiving and material handling effort, less quality assurance verification time, less inventory record-keeping time and less storage space.

For information from MGS Machine, call (612) 425-8808 or Circle 587. For information from Mini Graphics, call (516) 223-6464 or Circle 588.

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