The Department of Health and Social Care’s report and recommendations into Medication and dispensing errors

Paul Fleming, the British Generic Manufacturers Association’s Technical Director, said: “We welcome the Government’s focus on medicines errors. As part of this, generic medicine manufacturers take packaging design very seriously, to help ensure the safe use of their products. The BGMA holds regular best practice workshops with the medicines regulator MHRA looking at ways that packaging design, labelling and the patient information leaflets (that are in medicine packs) can be improved – to reduce the risk of error when dispensing, administering and using medicines. Among the aspects that are taken into account are that dispensing takes place in busy pharmacies and that older people are often using many different medicines at the same time. Increasingly we are looking at additional ways to improve the safe use of medicines as well as the packaging, for example codes on the pack that could be read by a smart phone to link to apps and websites providing key safety information on the medicine.”