The right color pill helps the medicine go down
I just read an interesting article about colored pills in the pharmaceutical biz.
Think Nexium, the acid reflux disease drug, otherwise known as "the purple pill"
or Pfizer's Viagra, a male impotency pill, with it's distinctly blue hue.
One company that creates colored coatings for medicine, has developed a library of more than 200 pill colors — including "cheesecake" beige, "wasabi" green and "bubble gum" pink.
The coatings, which come in powdered form, are edible and regulated by the federal Food and Drug Administration. They are made primarily of cellulose, a plant-based material derived from either wood pulp or cotton.
Color CoatingsInteresting! I always knew that the psychology of color came into play in developing products for the market place, but this gives you a better idea of how important color's role really is.
Color is a critical branding element used in solid dose, pharmaceutical product design. It serves to distinguish a product while influencing the physical and emotional perceptions with physicians, pharmacists and patients. Emotional preferences affect brand preferences, resulting in greater market share gain.
For example, color can be used to visually distinguish different dosage strengths of a drug, in addition to providing an easy method for recognizing a specific medication. Chronically ill patients and older individuals may be taking six or more different tablets daily. In these situations, easy distinctions between drugs can be critical.
Color is important in: • differentiating pharmaceutical product dosages • reducing medication administration errors • enhancing patient compliance • strengthening brand identity • establishing trademarks image source
A number of different studies link color with perceived therapeutic efficacy, site of action and drug strength. Color impacts perceptions of efficacy and relates to the potency of the dose. For example: darker to lighter colors = stronger to weaker dosages.
article via Asbury Park Press
5 comments:
I came across this post serendipitously while running a routine search for information pertinent to AlignMap, my professional blog dealing with patient compliance, but was impressed with the content and especially those gorgeous colors to the point that I'm recommending Hue in my non-medical Heck of a Guy blog. The post is Color Me Impressed. Great work.
As someone who used to dispense medication in a nursing home, color was a great time saver (and potential hazard for errors if that's all you went by). Sometimes color is fantastic there was a vitamin that was orange and black (similar to the red/black) capsule that was stunning; and sometimes it was horrible like a 40mg Prozac that is orange and green-blue.
great feedback! i can see how colored pills could be a double-edged sword. great if they help you sort out meds, and really scary if some other medicine shared color schemes/shapes and they got mixed up. yikes... not something to take lightly.
Tee-hee... my meds are: warm-grey, aqua-blue and sherbety orange. I'll let you guess what they might be.
As you might guess, the grey is my least favorite color... but frankly, I don't rightly remember ever having pleasant or unpleasant reactions to these pills as regards their purpose or efficacy... (Not consciously anyway!)
I really have to check Technorati.com more often. I love it when people use my pictures on their websites! (But I really hated those huge ping horse pills.)
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