Did you know that the global packaging industry generates an estimated 500 billion U.S. dollars annually? Whether you are talking about the packaging that takes place for medical equipment sales, or the more run of the mill, specialty healthcare packaging, these products are incredibly important to the health and safety of the population of the United States. If you need to invest in medical packaging designs for medical equipment sales, or you are just interested in the top medical equipment companies, here are a few important facts you need to know.

Clamshell blister packaging is sealed with adhesive and heat to provide a securely packaged product. Medical packaging requires a higher level of quality due to the sensitivity of pharmaseuticals, and the liability of the company packaging the product.

Blister pack is a term for several types of pre-formed plastic packaging used for small consumer goods, foods, and for pharmaceuticals. The primary component of a blister pack is a cavity or pocket made from a formable web, usually a thermoformed plastic. This usually has a backing of paperboard or a lidding seal of aluminum foil or plastic. A blister that folds onto itself is often called a clamshell.

Blister packs are useful for protecting the product against external factors such as humidity and contamination for extended periods of time. Opaque blisters also protect sensitive products against daylight.

Blister packs are commonly used as unit-dose packaging for pharmaceutical tablets, capsules or lozenges. Not only that, but blister packaging is a favorite among manufacturers because it prevents shoplifting due to the difficulty of opening the product. One of the most common forms of blister packaging is called the clamshell, in which the product is encased in two pieces of molded plastic.

Blister packs can provide barrier protection for shelf life requirements, and a degree of tamper resistance. In the USA, blister packs are mainly used for packing physician samples of drug products, or for Over The Counter, or the OTC, products in the pharmacy. In other parts of the world, blister packs are the main packaging type since pharmacy dispensing and re-packaging are not common. A series of blister cavities is sometimes called a blister card or blister strip as well as blister pack. The difference between a strip pack and blister pack is that a strip pack doesn’t have thermo-formed or cold formed cavities; the strip pack is formed around the tablet at a time when it is dropped to the sealing area between sealing molds.

In some parts of the world the pharmaceutical blister pack for medical equipment sales are known as a Push-Through-Pack, an accurate description of two key properties the lidding foil is brittle allowing to press the product out while breaking the lidding foil and a semi-rigid formed cavity being sufficiently collapsable to be able to dispense the tablet or capsule by means of pressing it out with the thumb. Read this for more.