Case Study

Safer by design

Packaging design is not something that most people associate with patient safety. But in fact good design can save lives.

Every year 900,000 people in British hospitals are affected by errors with their medication and 1,200 of these will die as a result. It is estimated that one third of these errors are caused by confusion over packaging and labelling.

We are working with students at the Royal College of Art to develop a ‘good design’ toolkit for packaging. This highlights best practice in areas such as font size, colour contrasts, branding and hierarchies of information to help designers create easy-to-read packs that prevent incorrect administration or missed doses.

Clear packaging can make all the difference when a doctor in a high-pressured hospital environment needs to recognise quickly the right medicine, or a patient with poor vision needs to read the label on their medicine.

Good packaging also helps patients stick to their treatment regimens. GSK design teams are developing user-friendly medicine packaging that encourages patients to follow their medication programme properly and increases the likelihood of successful treatment.

For example, patients taking Requip, GSK’s treatment for restless legs syndrome, need to take three different strengths of tablet over a 14-day treatment programme. To help patients differentiate between the three tablets our designers have developed Requip RLS Dosepak, which uses colour-coded tablets on a single blister card and clear pictorial instructions. Other new approaches we are testing include an electronic reminder cap which lights up when a tablet should be taken.