中文A pharmaceutical label used to have one job: carry the required information legibly and stay attached. The label Schreiner MediPharm has developed for SHL Medical’s Quanta Pen does four things at once, and the reasons behind each one say a good deal about where drug delivery packaging is heading.
The Device Sets the Requirements
The Quanta Pen is a multi-fixed-dose injector platform designed for long-term cardiometabolic treatments, including weight-management therapies. Its no-priming design is intended to deliver consistent performance across repeated injections.
Every element of that description shapes what the label has to do. Multi-fixed-dose means the device is used repeatedly rather than discarded after a single administration — so the label endures handling, storage, temperature cycling and possibly months of contact with hands and bags. Long-term cardiometabolic treatment means the same patient interacts with the same device format over an extended period, making usability compound in importance. And the weight-management reference points at what is currently the most commercially intense and most heavily counterfeited category in injectable pharmaceuticals.
That last point matters more than it might appear. Weight-management injectables have generated demand that legitimate supply has struggled to meet, and wherever that gap opens, counterfeit product follows. Authentication on these devices is no longer a precautionary feature. It is a live requirement.
Four Functions in One Construction
Schreiner MediPharm’s precision-fit label integrates several features into a single component.
Anti-slip varnish. The label uses an anti-slip varnish to improve grip and handling. This sounds minor until one considers the actual use case: a patient, possibly elderly, possibly with reduced dexterity or impaired vision, self-administering an injection. A cylindrical pen with a smooth printed surface is genuinely difficult to hold securely. Surface friction engineered into the label converts the graphics layer into a functional grip. It is a human factors solution delivered through a printing process.
Holographic authentication. A holographic effect serves as a visible authentication feature. The value of an overt feature — something a patient or pharmacist can verify by eye, without equipment or training — is that it works at the point of use rather than only in a laboratory. Covert features protect the supply chain; overt features protect the individual holding the device.
Integrated NFC chip. An embedded NFC chip lets users access product information, instructions and services with a smartphone. For a device used repeatedly over months, this addresses a real problem: printed instructions get discarded with the carton, and a label large enough to carry full guidance would not fit a pen body. A tap-to-access link means instructions, technique videos, dose tracking and support services remain available for the life of the device. It also creates a second authentication channel, since a serialized chip can be verified against a manufacturer database.
Customization. The label can be configured with additional security, design and functional elements to suit different pharmaceutical brands and applications — positioning it as a platform component rather than a single bespoke product. A device manufacturer supplying multiple pharmaceutical customers needs a label architecture that adapts to each brand’s requirements without redesign from scratch.
Why Combining Them Is the Hard Part
Each of these technologies exists independently and has done for years. The engineering difficulty lies in making them coexist in one thin, precisely dimensioned label on a curved surface.
Anti-slip varnish adds surface texture. Holographic features require optically precise, typically very smooth structures to function. Those two requirements pull in opposite directions and must be zoned within the same construction. An NFC inlay adds physical thickness and contains a metallic antenna, which affects how the label conforms to a cylinder, how it dies out, and how it applies at production speed. The antenna must also remain readable through the surrounding print and varnish layers without detuning.
Then there is the description precision-fit, which in a pharmaceutical context means dimensional tolerance tight enough to guarantee consistent placement on every unit — necessary both for automated application and for regulatory compliance, where label position relative to a viewing window or dose indicator can be a validated specification.
The Commercial Logic
According to the companies, the combined pen and label give pharmaceutical manufacturers a scalable self-injection platform supporting usability, product differentiation and digital patient engagement.
Those three benefits map to three separate buyer concerns. Usability affects adherence, and adherence affects clinical outcomes and therefore commercial performance — patients who find a device awkward use it less consistently. Differentiation matters because injectable platforms are increasingly commoditized, and a holographic, tactile, connected device presents differently on a pharmacy shelf and in a patient’s hand. Digital patient engagement is the strategically significant one: an NFC tap establishes a direct channel between manufacturer and patient, which historically has barely existed in prescription pharmaceuticals. That channel can carry adherence support, refill reminders and outcome data.
What Converters Should Take From It
For label converters, this project illustrates where value is migrating in pharmaceutical work. Straightforward compliance labelling is a price-driven business. Multifunctional constructions that combine security printing, functional coatings and embedded electronics require capabilities that most converters do not have, and command margins accordingly.
The requirements are steep — registration precision, inlay handling, hybrid decoration and validated processes under pharmaceutical quality systems. But the direction of travel is clear enough. As drug delivery shifts toward patient-administered devices used over long treatment courses, the label stops being a data carrier and becomes part of the device: a grip surface, an authentication mechanism, an information gateway and a brand asset in one component.
Source: Labels & Labeling, August 20, 2026 — Schreiner develops medical pen label
