KEREN SOOKNE’S PERSPECTIVE

Annual Design Gallery Reflects ‘Natural’ and Calm Wishes

We take a look at what’s new in OTC design, plus news on the reshoring, traceability, and cannabis fronts.

Perhaps not surprising: healthcare products on shelves continue to reflect desires for stress relief and natural ingredients. This year, our package design gallery (pp. 20) saw more mainstream brands touting what the products are free from, in some cases offering front-panel real estate to what is lacking from the product vs. what it contains. To meet the needs of ever-more-educated consumers, some packages had links to more information—this also saves space on the package to allow for minimalist designs.

Also in package design, we profile High Desert Pure and their range of cannabis-containing wellness products, complete with labels that uphold compliance and withstand potential drips from oil-based products (pp. 28). Cannabis brands have to get creative balancing compliance labels with aesthetics—a challenge not new to life science product veterans.

In other news, Stephanie Neil covers reshoring efforts including diagnostic kits and PPE manufacturing stateside (pp. 14). This is made possible via a combination of advanced technologies: intelligent software and adaptive hardware using computer vision, machine learning, cloud computing, and robotics.

Connectivity plays a key role not just in new automation projects for reshoring, but in supply chain traceability. Experts gathered at HDA’s Traceability Webinar series and we cover what’s happening (and what’s concerning) in regard to data exchange and meeting 2023 traceability requirements (pp. 24).

KEREN SOOKNE is the Director of Editorial Content of Healthcare Packaging. She may be reached at ksookne@pmmimediagroup or at linkedin.com/in/kerensookne