Sensors for Smart Packaging in Healthcare and Food Industry

Smart packaging systems, also called active or intelligent packaging systems, are typically used for food, beverage or pharmaceutical products to extend their shelf life, monitor freshness, provide visual information about the product inside the package, improve safety and offer convenience. Recent advancements in the smart packaging materials and technologies offer huge potential for healthcare and food industry. Along with the invention of syringes that change colour after use to inhibit the spread of the disease, and smart packaging that alerts on the expiry date of its food content, it is the real-time communication with sensors built into these packaging that really brings the change and creates new opportunities. Intelligent packaging technologies can change the supplier-consumer relations in food chain operations, as well as impact the way that healthcare professionals and patients interact with medical devices and each other.