Safety measures taken in the process of pharma labeling

Drug products if mislabeled can cause a threat to public health. People consume medicines with complete trust and if any lot of drug product launched in the market with wrong labels, the result can be hazardous. Both life saving and regular medicines bear the same liability, but costly products recalls with significant product liability. Hence maintaining the integrity of each label becomes a primary requirement for pharmaceutical companies.

• Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has therefore tightened the regulations related with pharmaceutical products and suggested to follow some common yet important measures. Different safety measures are being taken to prevent chaos may outbreak due to mislabeling. Some of them are listed below:

• According to FDA, a label must contain all the vital drug information. This includes composition of the medicine, dose information, storage information, manufacturing date, expiry date, product code, bar code ad price. Every detail should be clearly mentioned and must be legible to be read by the consumer.

• FDA also suggests to go for electronic verification of the product received. This ensures that packaging component produced is exactly the same as customer ordered. It is ensured by using electronic detection devices for bar codes and IC mark. These devices can scan a number of different bar codes or identity controls (IC) mark on individual labels.

• The quality of paper used for pharma labeling is another concern for drug manufacturing companies, because this is also where FDA has tightened the rules. The paper used as labels must be made to last as long as the life of the drug itself. Therefore, not all papers can be used for this purpose. For pharma labeling special high quality paper sheets are used which are also layered with thin cellophane sheets to protect the information printed on the label from moisture and rough uses.

• Inspection of the pharma labeling is accomplished with vision inspection equipments like camera. A photograph of the label is taken as a “truth copy” to compare it with the product’s preset specification and guidelines. Though, only a handful of companies are there which uses true vision inspection, but it has many advantages for compliance of the drug regulations.

Stricter enforcement by FDA had made pharma labeling companies boost their technical equipments and enhance their skills to produce labels that come under all the regulations set by FDA. Following above mentioned regulations is not only a need but also a responsibility of both medicine manufacturing and pharma labeling companies.