Auxiliary Labels On-Demand

Since 1949, Beverly Hospital, https://www.beverly.org/,  has maintained a tradition for providing high quality care to local residents of Montebello, Pico Rivera, Monterey Park, El Monte, Whittier, East Los Angeles and surrounding communities.

Beverly Hospital is a not-for-profit, leading and independent 224-bed acute care facility that is proud of the medical services and comfort provided to patients. From emergency room and hospitalization to outpatient procedures, Beverly Hospital offers a full range of services with the latest technology; including the pharmacy.

Beverly Hospital, like other small to midsize hospitals in the United States, processes about 2000 prescription orders per day.  About 250 of those orders or prescriptions require instructional color labels such as “Look-alike Sound Alike”, “For Oral Use Only”, “Protect From Light”, and “Shake Well and Keep In Refrigerator”.  Wayne Campbell, Director of Pharmacy of Beverly Hospital says, “we get these auxiliary labels from 4 different label manufacturers. Sometimes we’d get them in a timely fashion; sometimes we don’t.  We don’t know who ordered what from whom or when it’s coming in.  It’s very challenging”.

To improve this situation, Beverly Hospital deployed the ClariSafe Color Label Solution from Addmaster, https://www.addmaster.com/product/clarisafe/, with partners HP, and Neenah Paper.   Addmaster has over 30 years of experience developing and manufacturing inkjet printers for the financial market with over 300,000 printers installed worldwide. John Clary, VP of Engineering at Addmaster, decided to develop an inkjet color printer with a small footprint and software that mimics pharmacy personnel ordering from a catalog to print the color labels they need when they need them. 

ClariSafe Printer

“ClariSafe™ can print all of my labels on-demand, any time I need them.  It prevents overstocking.  It prevents us from running out of labels and enables us to make special labels that are not available on the market” says Wayne. 

ClariSafe Label Catalog

 Learn more about the ClariSafe deployment at Beverly Hospital here:

According to Alex Shafer, Director of Business Development for Addmaster, “The ClariSafe Color Label System costs $1,495 and includes both the printer and application to print durable color labels when needed.  Plus we’ve added and will continue to add labels in the catalog as hospitals want and need more secondary artwork to print.”

As you may remember, I’ve written about ClariSafe before:  https://colorlabelsondemand.blogspot.com/2016/11/new-option-for-pharmacyanesthesia-labels.html

To purchase the ClariSafe Color Label Systems, visit our store: 

https://colorlabelsolutions.com/product/clarisafe-medical-color-prescription-label-printer/

To purchase ClariSafe ink, visit out store:

https://colorlabelsolutions.com/product/clarisafe-tri-color-inkjet-cartridge-97262/

For pharmacy managers, ClariSafe is a great option to simplify secondary/auxiliary labeling. This system eliminates purchasing a large inventory of labels, enabling you to print what you need, when you need them; with a very small footprint device.  Contact us if the ClariSafe Color Label Systems may fit your pharmacy operation.

Guy Mikel

info@colorlabelsolution.com 

Coatings

After the acquisition of Color Label Solutions by General Data Corporation (GDC):

https://colorlabelsondemand.blogspot.com/2019/02/color-label-solutions-merger.html

I had the opportunity to visit one of the key drivers of our interest in joining GDC:  The coating division.

GDC Coating Operation

Let me tell you more about our interest in this group; and more about the group’s capability.

Before I start describing the coatings group, I want to give you a simple primer on how labels are made.  General Data has an entire webpage/video to answer this question.

https://www.general-data.com/videos/understanding-labels-label-components-what-makes-label

Labels have 4 primarily components:

• Topcoat
• Facestock
• Adhesive
• Liner (which is technically not a part of the label but a necessary carrier)

Label Construction

The Facestock is the paper/synthetic material that makes up the most visible part of the label.  Underneath the facestock, a layer of adhesive is coated to adhere the face to whatever is to be labeled.  The liner, underneath the adhesive, is a carrier to make it easy to expose the adhesive.  On top of many or most facestocks, is a topcoat designed to adhere the ink to the face.  Currently, I would estimate the 95%+ of the labels we sell have an inkjet topcoat.

To make labels involves a seemingly complex supply chain involving 3 key participants:

• Raw Material Providers
• Coaters
• Converters

Label Supply Chain

Raw material providers sell paper, synthetic paper, liner and adhesives to coaters.  Coaters create constructions of a variety of types of label materials.  Converters die cut the labels into specific sizes; as well as many produce preprinted labels.

Given the importance of coatings, the ability to coat is an important value creating function in the label supply chain.  Long term, this function should make GDC very competitive in the on-demand color label market.

General Data’s coated products division is an industry leading contract coater, specializing in the development and production of engineered films and other materials. They utilize an array of face materials, adhesives, substrates, coatings and topcoats to meet the specifications of our customers for a wide variety of applications.

John Finger, General Data Corporation

According to John Finger, Vice President of Research & Development for the Coatings Division of GDC, “we started coating about 4 year ago.  We saw the need in the market to custom coat materials for specific applications.” 

During our discussions, I asked John “what is your largest type of coating that you currently apply.  John stated, “about 2 years ago, we started coating adhesives; specifically, new technology around UV adhesives.  We had a customer/partner who asked for our assistance to produce this new product.  Now we coat not only these specialty adhesives but also adhesives for the products we sell.  We not only purchased previous coated material from some of the largest, industrial coaters, but also coat label adhesives for our own internal use.”

GDC Coater

Once I understood about the importance of coating adhesives in the GDC operation, I asked, “what other materials do you coat?”  According to John, “one interesting film we coat and sell is a 7 Mil adhesive applied to a building material.  In addition, we coat pressure sensitive enclosures for food; resealable bag closures.  Also, GDC coats products that are for laser, thermal, digital, scratch resistant and dry erase applications.  After 4 years, GDC is selling many different coated products.”

After working in the business for many years, I see the capability to coat an important aspect in the label market.  Again, the large industrial coaters will continue to supply the majority of the market.  But specialty items such as inkjet coatings, produced in relatively small quantities, will become a more important aspect of the label business.  This capability should insure the long-term viability of Color Label Solutions, Inc.

Contact us if you have interest in a specialty label product.

Guy Mikel

855-962-7670

info@colorlabelsolutions.com