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4 Types of Medication Packaging Equipment


To ensure safety during medication preparation and distribution procedures, hospital pharmacy equipment must maintain compliance with regulatory controls and conformity assessments. Purchasing safe equipment and packaging systems, and making timely replacements for outdated systems, is paramount to businesses in health care. Here are four types of medication packaging equipment available by Medical Packaging Inc., LLC (MPI) to choose from when installing or upgrading your pharmacy equipment. These include oral solid and oral liquid packaging systems along with overwrapping and labeling systems.


Oral Solid Packaging Systems

Auto-Print®

To provide fast and accurate packaging with barcoding and label printing in-house, Auto-Print® Packaging System offers a comprehensive solution. This is a barcode and package system that meets technical specifications to print clear and scannable medication information.  A safe, tamper-proof unit dose package containing detailed medication and barcode information will be delivered to the bedside thanks to this efficiency in labeling and packaging. 


The system is designed to package at a speed of 60-unit dose packages per minute. This is useful for packaging both tablets and capsules for oral solid packaging in wholesale and retail pharmacy locations. Along with a Model #9300E printer with 300 DPI resolution, this packaging system comes with Pak-EDGE™ UD Barcode Labeling Software that is optimized for use with Windows® software. This barcode technology works for 2D, linear, and GS1 barcode creation. Customers also receive access to the First DataBank™ for comprehensive prescription drug source library and imaging information.


As you will learn in a moment, there are several attachments and additional pieces of equipment that operate as part of the Auto-Print® Unit Dose Packaging System. This is a total barcoding and packaging automation system that has been in production for more than 30 years.


Hospital pharmacies depend on this packaging machinery for handling the bulk of oral solid packaging needs in the health care industry. The use of the Auto-Print® system allows for stricter adherence to stringent quality control procedures by hospitals and the federal government. This system also serves to decrease costs, increase efficiency, and reduce and hopefully eliminate errors for pharmacies.


Express 90

The comparable Auto-Print® Express 90 Packaging System maxes out at 90 unit doses of oral solid medications per minute. Acute care, hospital and retail pharmacies appreciate the higher rate of production afforded by this piece of machinery. The Express 90 system is clocked at 50 percent faster than the standard Auto-Print®.


When speed counts the most, the Express 90 is the optimal choice in packaging systems for oral solid medications. If you are a business owner who previously owned an Auto-Print® but now wants to increase output, the Express 90 is the way to go. This packaging system increases efficiency and cost savings while maximizing output in a safe and economical manner.


Oral Solid Feeder Attachment

The Auto-Print® Oral Solid Feeder (OSF) Attachment allows bulk medication to be loaded into the feeder. This optimizes the fully automated packaging system for speed and efficiency. While optional, the feeder attachment is value-packed to offer increased accuracy and timing when filling prescriptions.


The system operates with oral solids, including tablets and capsules, being filled and sealed in sterile unit dose packages. Using the method of bulk loading medication, individual units are measured, counted, and sorted using an automated system. This eliminates the back-numbing task of hand sorting medications.


The Oral Solid Feeder will handle tablets and capsules measuring up to a half-inch in diameter. High volume runs for pharmacies and wholesale distributors are improved and optimized with the OSF attachment for the Auto-Print® oral solid packaging solution.


The oral solid feeder attachment is an accessory item for the Auto-Print® Packaging System. MPI offers additional customization for the medication packaging system that works with this OSF. This includes the Canister Feeder Attachment, which we will cover next. 


Canister Feeder Attachment

The Auto-Print® Canister Feeder (CF) Attachment provides additional automation support for filling prescription unit dose packages. The canister feeder facilitates the specialized packaging using canisters. This oral solid unit dose packaging system is also modifiable with the latest in drug canister technology.


With the Auto-Print® CF Attachment, the goal is to modify an existing canister technology to work with automated packaging assemblies. This provides much more efficiency in packaging fulfillment. The attachment handles up to 60 packages in 60 seconds and supports a minimal cost per dose (CPD) for the most in economic savings.


Only those canisters with a 7cm-by-7cm canister base size will fit, but the system only needs one canister. Also, the canister feeder option is only available for the standard Auto-Print® and can be operated in canister mode or manual mode...


Read the full article here


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