Pune-based Pratham Technologies, which has been manufacturing pharma leaflet folding machines for over two decades, has been consolidating its position in the pharmaceutical packaging market by adding new products.

After having introduced an offline carton sorting machine Supersort in 2015, which has already seen five installations, the company has now introduced a proof checking software Ipv ProofCheck.

Developed by Pune-based software specialist, Image ProVision, and marketed by Prtaham, the ProofCheck is aimed at pharma companies as well as their packaging vendors.

“The idea is to help pharma companies as well as converters in their responsibilities to check the accuracy of all printed products, as well as those received from partners,” says Pratham managing director, Datta Deshpande.

He adds, “With the joint product portfolio of carton inspection system and proofreading software, we cover the entire quality assurance process from the initial stage, up to 100% inspection of the finished packages. In particular, it is aimed at package inserts and folding boxes.”

It is critical for the pharma companies as well as pharma converters to detect even a minute deviation in the product information leaflets or the instructions on the cartons, especially when they are operationg in the regulated markets.

"Even a missing comma or a dot can lead to undesirable consequences," says Deshpande.

For every pharma converter, avoiding printing mistakes at every stage is important. A reliable print-packaging vendor is one who cross-checks the ready-to-print artwork PDF file with the original customer-approved artwork PDF file before printing. Going further, the scanned file of first prints should also be matched against the original customer-approved PDF file. That's when, the converter can assure his customer about 100% accuracy.

Now if that seems a difficult task with the inherent limitations of the manual proofreading process, this latest offering is what you need.

Deshpande says, ProofCheck provides both types of solutions with easy clicks. "PDF to PDF analysis for print-ready artworks and PDF to Scan analysis for printed sheets."

The crux of the software is checking the digital data pixel by pixel to detect deviations such as incorrect colour sequences, missing or wrong characters, spots or shadows, which get shown accordingly.

Deshpande explains, “During evaluation the deviations found in the scanned sample are displayed together with the master PDF. The results that are checked – are documented and can be traced back to each individual evaluation. Detailed fault reports including graphics and all details can be easily created. The results are summarised and saved in a PDF-document.”

"With ProofCheck, they can not only save time as well as costs in checking the artworks and text, but also remain assured about the correctness of their product." The system identifies every deviation from source image with user analyzing results, evaluating and commenting on any deviation from ‘norm’.

The ProofCheck provides pixel to pixel comparison based identification solutions for carton, leaflet and label analysis. The software gives simplified and highlighted view of sample UPs with deviation locator. It also provides UP wise sorting of deviations with indications of ‘Accepted’, ‘Not Accepted’ and ‘Not Handled’. Provision to give Comment to the selected Deviation is also provided.

The software conforms with the international norms as per requirements of FDA 21 CFR Part 11 rules. The system generates both Short Report for quick and brief understanding as well as Long Report for detail understanding of analysis with pictorial data.

Pratham sells this product along with the Graphtec scanner, which is modified to suit this particular application.

There are several international alternatives like Tec4Check, Global Vision, EyeC and AVT, among others but Deshpande assures that this Made in India product is on par with similar products available from European suppliers but at a little over half the cost.