P Packaging/Medical Session

Keynote Speech: Recent Development Trends and the Future of Flexible Packaging

In response to demands from a diversifying society, including reducing food loss, increasing food safety, serving aging societies, and solving global environmental problems, packaging is playing an increasingly important role. The keynote speech will introduce some of the possibilities of packaging, including functional films for foods and non-food items, as well as examples of such functional packaging, new quality assurance systems, and topics from around the world.

How House Foods Is Improving Retort Pouches:Collaboration With Converters

In the 1960s, retort pouches were developed to replace cans in the food industry, which led to the birth of revolutionary retort foods. Retort food greatly changed daily eating habits, and have evolved to become even more convenient as they can now be cooked in microwave ovens. We will look back over the history of House Foods retort products as we introduce how we are developing and improving these today in collaboration with converters.

Medical Packaging

Roughly 85% of medical product sales in Japan are accounted for by prescription drugs. In general, prescription drugs, however, contain unstable components, which means they can hydrolyze or oxidize during transport. In Japan, pharmacies provide patients with the necessary number of pills or capsules by cutting the number of units from a PVC sheet called a blister pack. On the other hand, in Europe and the US most drugs are sold in PVC and PET bottles. East Asian has a rainy season, which is a difficult environment for such drugs, so various modifications have been made for distribution, such as investigating new materials and using different packaging, to ensure the quality of such drugs. In this talk, we will explain these developments as clearly as possible for those who may be new to the field.

Patch Characteristics and Utility

Patches are a superior drug delivery system in terms of reducing side effects, increasing sustainability, and easing use, and are now being recognized as a third administration method following oral and hypodermic administration. Some of the benefits include long-term storage capability of a constant drug concentrations, no first pass effect on the liver, usable by patients who cannot take drugs orally, no affect on meals, easily removed when side effects are recognized, decreased administration frequency, and improved compliance. In this talk, we will introduce the characteristics and utility of patches.

Patch Utility and Safety as Seen From Living Organisms

Given Japan's super aged society, there is an increasing range of patches that are easy for elderly to use. Many elderly, however, have dry skin, so in many cases patches will cause skin damage after application. Such skin damage obstructs the effective application of patches, creating a need to aggressively prevent such problems.
In this talk, we will discuss the utility and safety of patches from a fundamental and clinical standpoint.

Developing a Hydrocolloid Adhesive Bandaged Specifically for the Finger

TOYO KAGAKU has developed a new adhesive bandage that fits snuggly to finger joints. We developed this bandaged by replacing the conventional hard, thick hydrocolloid adhesive bandage, which would not conform well to flexible areas, such as finger joints, with a thin, flexible hydrocolloid bandage that maintains the same essential functions. In this talk, we will introduce the problems that occurred, our solutions to these, and our approach to the development of this ultra-thin hydrocolloid bandage.