The Reason Why: Smart packaging can improve habits and transform healthcare

In 2004 Deborah Adler was horrified to learn that her grandmother mistakenly took her grandfather’s prescription pills. Then a student at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, Adler redesigned her grandmother’s medication bottle and label, so the text would be easier to read. Target Stores later commercialized Adler’s innovation, promoting it as ClearRX™ medication packaging. Any baby boomer whose medicine cabinet has slowly filled with prescriptions over the years can appreciate that better labeling is important. So why is it that today, only one percent of the 3.5 billion prescriptions filled in the US have highly readable labels based on the safety improvements of Adler’s med packaging makeover?

It’s easy to see how making a pill bottle label more legible could reduce errors in medication consumption, but I believe that simple innovations in packaging can do much more. I believe “smart packaging” can actually change the way we use products and even encourage healthier behavior…