Pharmaceutical & Life Sciences

The drivers impacting the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry worldwide are daunting. They include patent expiration and anticipated revenue loss, shrinking new-product pipelines, growing international competition, increased oversight of drug safety, fewer drugs being approved, the growing influence of generic-drug companies, and aging populations that are living longer.

To deal with these challenges, there likely will be considerable M&A consolidation, with many buyers emerging from outside the U.S. This in itself will present corporate branding challenges. But cost-costing measures by themselves won't meet the challenges of the industry.

Spotlight on the Supply Chain

Thus the key issue for innovation-led companies will be how to get new products out of the laboratory and into the marketplace more quickly and efficiently. This puts the spotlight squarely on the pharmaceutical supply chain, specifically pharmaceutical packaging and the validation of pharmaceutical workflows.

Schawk offers a diverse range of services to help shorten time to market. These include strategic design to improve labeling and reduce medical error; pharmaceutical packaging technology solutions that include validation to help streamline workflows while meeting rigorous privacy, accountability and record-keeping requirements; and the execution of pharmaceutical packaging artwork.

Aggressive pharmaceutical and life-sciences companies require optimized supply chains for packaging, including workflows that deliver both cost savings and standardized best practices. In a strategic partner, this calls for pharmaceutical packaging expertise that combines quality assurance through pharmaceutical validation combined with the capacity to deliver pharmaceutical supply chain improvements for production art plus modifications such as those driven by pan-regional product launches. 

Pharmas Outsourcing Packaging Artwork Processes

Schawk has found that global pharmaceutical companies increasingly are choosing to outsource the development of packaging artwork. Many of these pharmaceutical giants have traditionally managed the production art process within the secure environment of their internal graphics teams. But increasingly, they view packaging artwork as a non-core activity that can be outsourced to a partner with proven expertise in the validation of pharmaceutical packaging workflows.

To make the transition from controlling pharmaceutical packaging development in-house to engaging an external business partner represents a huge cultural shift for these risk-averse, defect-intolerant organizations. In response to this, Schawk has established Pharmaceutical/Life Sciences teams throughout the world who are GMP-trained and dedicated to working on these accounts. These teams are comprised of professionals who have full experience in the highly regulated workflow environments pharmaceutical and life sciences packaging and validation.

Every day, Schawk helps pharmaceutical companies create compelling and consistent brand experiences while accelerating time-to-market for new product introductions.