A prescription for success: Dr Reddy's makes pharma packaging more patient-friendly

Redesigns its syrup bottles and blister packs

Dr Reddy's Laboratories (DRL) has redesigned its syrup bottles and blister packs to make them patient-friendly. At present, DRL is using the new design for five of its brands and will extend to 25 brands over next six months, the drugmaker announced on Thursday. Traditionally, pharma packaging has been designed to meet technical and regulatory requirements and not so much to address patient convenience. Dr Reddy's tied up with design and consultancy firm IDEO and interacted with doctors and pharmacists to understand patient's needs.

Based on that insight, the company has redesigned its blister packs and syrup bottles it sells in India. It plans to extend the new packaging design to other emerging markets, including Russia. The exercise will increase its pharma packaging cost by about 20 per cent but there will be no increase in retail price. The change in packaging is part of company's patient-centric initiative called Purple Health.

As a part of new design, blisters have extra space on the top and bottom, making it easy for users to read the product name, retail price and expiry date, while syrup bottles have easy-to-hold cups for clear measure.

M V Ramana, the company's executive vice-president & head, branded markets (India & emerging countries), said, "Dr Reddy's is committed to addressing unmet patient needs through patient-centric innovation and we are very excited to introduce our new packaging for patients in India."