medical packaging has seen a lot if changes during the period of time. rollande hall, who is a professor of packaging, shares his personal retrospective about it. when first leaving university, rollande hall worked in a retail bottling vinegar pharmacy, wrapping up mosspeat, and providing prescriptions for patients in nearby villages. the pharmacist, his employer, was extremely demanding. a lot of new employees were sacked after few weeks of employment as he found them to working too slowly this was despite the fact that they all were being pressured into taking "purple heart" one or two tablets every morning to make them energized and work vigorously. at this business, the core activity was making up prescriptions of doctors. surgical instruments, cosmetics, otc medicines, gardening and household products were also provided. for walkin customers, prescription medicines were made up, and other prescriptions were despatched for delivery, either direct to a patient&39s home or to doctors&39 surgeries. if the doctor directly gave the information to the dispenser, there was no need for patient to get a prescription to the pharmacy. in those times, the roads were not crowded with the cars. the terms as drug theft were almost unheard of. due to which some doctors used to keep an open hatch in their exterior wall where they would drop off medicines for collection by patients. for those people who were unable to collect medicines from the pharmacy or their doctor, these pharmacists used to deliver to their home. one of the services offered to the arthritic was to loosen the caps placed on the screwtop bottles. the more dextrous were demonstrated how to compress the bottle cap in a door jamb and turn around the bottle. the term "medical device", in 1960, was not being used in the pharmacy they were known by their individual names syringes, forceps, ostomy pouches, bonesaws, stethoscopes, etc. in 1975, rollande hall first came across the term "medical device" when he saw an advertisement for a packaging engineer of medical device ". bottles for the medicine were made up of glass, and many were sent back to the pharmacy where they were disinfected and cleaned before using again. ground glass stoppers were reused after cleaning. corks were replaced, along with the liner inside the cap of screwtopped bottles. containers shaped circular made from lightweight cardboard generally were utilized for prescription tablets. patients&39 dosage and name were imprinted onto labels and applied by hand. in metal boxes, elastoplasts were packaged encased with metal lids, as were cough drops and condoms. medical devices were packaged in the similar kind of boxes which are now used for presentation of jewellery. the needles and hypodermic syringes were a medical device that was reusable. the words "traceability&rdquo and "sterile&rdquo were yet unknown by many people including rollande hall. the concept called "medical packaging" was missing. rollande hall sympathise with the secluded elderly now that the concept of home delivery has gone. packaging which is childresistant has further to go before it becomes arthritic friendly. on the other hand, rollande hall recognises that kids face less threat of poisoning. the wholesale switch to onetimeuse disposables may have been a shortterm policy. rollande hall says that he sometimes wonder that how much oil could have been saved if the tool industry had focused on making all devices easy to decontaminate, as well as at the same time, developed suitable sterilisation applications for hospital use. he says that regrettably there is no way to revert back, but he admires the industry of processing for minimizing the number of instruments that go to land fill. however, he worries that use of reprocessed instruments may increase the danger for patients. source of information httpwww.medicalpackaginginnovation.comauthor.aspsectionid467&docid558949
