PR: E Ink and Faubel unveil the med label to revolutionize the clinical trial supply chain

E Ink Holdings and Faubel & Co announced the availability of the Faubel-Med Label, a smart label for investigational medicinal products. The Med Label features E Ink’s low-voltage film technology, bringing display modules and new system designs to pharmaceutical packaging.

The Med Label is a combination of an ePaper display and a booklet label that is integrated with radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology to allow pharmaceutical packaging to be updated on demand. The Med Label features a segmented bi-stable E Ink display that can provide expiry updates – even on a sealed kit. This digital solution provides pharmaceutical companies an alternative to relabeling whenever stability data changes, allowing for considerable time and cost savings to international clinical trials.

“The Med Label is a breakthrough product that makes the handling of investigational medicinal products in clinical trial supply chains so much easier,” said Konrad Zachman, Head of Production for New Technologies at Faubel. “As we see a continuous growth in biologic products that require frequent updates on stability data, the Med Label emerges as a cost-effective, highly-efficient smart label that meets the demands of present and future compliance requirements.”

Thanks to E Ink’s ePaper solution, Faubel is expanding its service offerings to provide connected labels with RFID and ePaper technology. Furthermore, this innovation enables the pharmaceutical industry to go digital using valuable tools such as software and real-time reporting, among others. “We believe this is a game changer that will transform clinical trials, saving the industry time and money,” said Frank Jäger, Managing Director at Faubel.

The Med Label is equipped with a battery-free, always-on ePaper display and an RFID tag. It facilitates on-demand label updates for expiry dates at the clinical depot site and provides real time reporting and documentation that meet compliance requirements.

“E Ink’s smart packaging solutions are at the forefront of pharmaceutical packaging innovation,” said Paul Apen, Chief Strategy Officer at E Ink. “Adding displays to pharma packaging requires thin and flexible displays that are also low-power. Our ePaper displays are perfect for this application given their thin, low voltage properties, as well as easy readability, contrast and wide viewing angle.”

E Ink’s new low-voltage film uses roughly 5v compared to the typical 15v driving voltage for electronic paper displays, which decreases the power required for label updates and speeds the update process.

“We are thrilled to partner with Faubel to create a product that will help the pharmaceutical industry take advantage of the digital resources at its disposal,” said FY Gan, Executive Vice President of Sales Center at E Ink. “The potential to enhance and simplify clinical trials is endless; we’re excited to collaborate with industry leaders like Faubel to provide system integration capability for not only the pharmaceutical industry in a total solution, but a wide range of smart packaging applications that deliver the best customer experience of using e-paper for digital transformation.”

The Med Label is currently available for commercial use.

About Faubel

The Faubel Group is a global supplier of functional labels with various locations in Europe, the USA and Asia. The Faubel Pharma Services business unit has positioned itself as an innovation and quality leader in clinical trial labeling for multinational trials.

Faubel Pharma Services deals with label design, the production of labels of up to 113 pages, the overprinting of pre-produced bulk goods with variable data as well as with routing. In addition to these established services, the multi-service provider develops individual packaging concepts that are able to mask investigational medicinal products and to withstand temperatures down to -196°C.

With its Faubel-Med Label, the company offers a unique label whose contents can be updated digitally. When stability data changes, the Med Label replaces re-labeling and provides the necessary flexibility for study pooling.

About E Ink Holdings

E Ink Holdings Inc. (8069.TWO), based on technology from MIT’s Media Lab, has transformed and defined the eReader market and is redefining the signage, architecture and design, mobile, wearable and retail markets with its ePaper technology, enabling a new multi-billion dollar market in less than 10 years. Its corporate philosophy aims to deliver revolutionary products, user experiences and environmental benefits through advanced technology development. This vision has led to its continuous investments in the field of ePaper displays as well as expanding the use of its technologies into a number of other markets and applications including smart packaging and fashion. Its Electrophoretic Display products make it the worldwide leader for ePaper. Its Fringe Field Switching (FFS) technologies are a standard for high-end LCD displays and have been licensed to all major liquid crystal display makers in the world. Listed in Taiwan’s Taipei Exchange (TPEx) and the Luxembourg market, E Ink Holdings is now the world’s largest supplier of ePaper displays.