Concerned about Risk in Your Sterile Barrier System? Consider Your Adhesive Coat

Successful aseptic presentation of medical devices can be impacted by package design and material selection. Adhesive coatings can have an impact, reports Oliver Healthcare Packaging.

“Adhesives can mitigate the risk of substrates tearing and delaminating, which can inhibit the ability of the clinician to present the sterile device in an aseptic manner,” explains Kevin Zacharias, technical director for Oliver. “Tearing and delamination of substrates may also introduce particulate. Adhesive coatings can also be more forgiving in a sealing process, making up for tooling or equipment short comings and other issues. Lastly, adhesive coatings offer a controlled, smooth package opening experience for the clinician.”

Zacharias and Rick Brady, technology manager for Oliver Healthcare Packaging, will be speaking about adhesives in the upcoming Webcast, “Adhesive Tips & Tricks Every Medical Packaging Engineer Should Know,” on Thursday, October 19.

Zacharias says that industry trends toward “clean packaging” could influence packaging engineers’ choice of packaging suppliers, materials, and adhesives. “There is an increased focus on clean packaging and low particulate in the industry, and a continued trend to low-risk packaging in general,” he explains. “When we say low-risk packaging, we mean high-performing adhesives that offer wide sealing windows with supportive data related to sterilization and stability.” More robust data packages are needed more than in the past, he says.

In addition, the industry “is also looking for excellent seal performance characteristics in relation to the rigors of sterilization and transportation with consistent performance within the validated sealing process window,” he adds. “A lot of focus is around demonstrating a robust sterile barrier system that maintains sterility to the point of use.”

In the webcast, Oliver will be addressing real-world customer challenges and how adhesive coatings were able to help.

Topics to be discussed include:

Formulation: How adhesive coatings used in sterile barrier packaging are formulated.

Substrates & applications: Understand the processes used to apply adhesives to substrates like DuPont Tyvek, medical-grade paper, films, and foils.

Risk mitigation: Where an issue is most likely to occur and how issues can be avoided.

Case studies: Learn about real-world issues related to adhesive coating technology and how those problems were solved.