Child Safe Packaging Group

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The Child-Safe Packaging Group Competition Sponsorship

Date of page: Wed 27 May 1998 at 12:36pm

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1st Winner - Dean Thornton
The Student Design Competition at Manchester Metropolitan University, sponsored by the Child-Safe Packaging Group, produced a number of extremely innovatory concepts. The competition, which was open to the final year and Post Graduate design students at the University???s Crewe & Alsager Campus, sought designs for a child resistant blister pack for pharmaceutical products.


The Child-Safe Packaging Group Competition Sponsorship

Real Innovation Using Existing Technology Emerged From The CSPG???s Student Design Competition at Manchester Metropolitan University - Wednesday May 27 th 1998

The Student Design Competition at Manchester Metropolitan University, sponsored by the Child-Safe Packaging Group, produced a number of extremely innovatory concepts. The competition, which was open to the final year and Post Graduate design students at the University???s Crewe & Alsager Campus, sought designs for a child resistant blister pack for pharmaceutical products.

Students were briefed on 24th September 1997, and the project was classified as one contributing to the marks available for their respective courses, either BA or Post Graduate Diploma.

A clear winner emerged with two of the candidates sharing the second prize. A large element of the design brief was to seek a blister pack that would be child resistant within the terms of BS EN 862, but that would not present a problem to opening by elderly or handicapped people.

The winning entry relied upon the fact that an adult, even a small or elderly adult, has a hand span at least twice the size of a 36 month old child, 36 months having been previously established as the age of greatest danger for child ingestions.

The design was produced by Dean Thornton, and it is a simple ???Squeeze to gain access??? and then push through the blister in the usual fashion. Child resistance comes about because a child of the target age does not have either the hand span to squeeze or the cognitive ability to follow the instructions. Observation has shown that they open blister packs by biting, twisting and turning and, the judges believe that within the terms of BS EN 862, the pack would be resistant to such treatment.

The two joint second prizes were won by Miss Sarah Kenney and Mr Christopher Phillips. In both of these concepts child resistance was obtained by obliging the user to employ cognitive abilities to open the pack. The tablet was, at the packing stage, placed in a child resistant chamber and it was necessary for the user to encourage it along a channel into an ejection chamber. The judges felt that the child resistance would be achieved in this fashion.

With the impending inclusion of the pharmaceutical industry within BS EN 862, some of these design ideas, all of which can be manufactured with existing technology, could well prove to be of real value to an industry that is crying out for child resistant packaging solutions whilst some within it are pretending to ignore the problem.

The judges were Dr James Robertson, a Paediatrician; who brought to the task his knowledge of what children can and cannot do. Trevor Hopley, Product Design Manager at United Closures & Plastics Plc and a CSPG member. And assistance was given by David Heaton MA, Senior Lecturer at the University and in charge of the design programme at Crewe & Alsager Faculty.
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Joint 2nd - Sarah Kenny
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Joint 2nd - Christopher Phillips
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