Webster-pak pioneer wins Order of Australia

Blister pack pioneer, Gerard Stevens, has been named a Member (AM) in the General Division of the Order of Australia in this year's Queen's Birthday Honours list for significant service to the pharmaceutical industry and to community health.

Stevens introduced the Webster-pak system that reduces nursing home medication administration errors, allows collaboration with allied health professionals, reduces medication wastage and government costs, and encourages better use of pharmacists’ clinical and educative skills.

More recently he has refined the concept to produce the Personal Medication Planner (PMP), a packaging solution for the elderly to help manage their medication requirements (PKN, August 2012, p.20).

His PMP system has won a number of plaudits in the packaging arena in the past year, including the Gold award in the accessibility section of last year's Packaging Council of Australia (PCA) awards, and in this year's international WorldStar Awards, presented by the World packaging organisation.

He has been managing director of Webstercare Medication Management Systems since the 1980s. It was there he produced the Controlled Dosage System, the first unit-dose blister pack in Australia.

He has also been a technical adviser to the Department of Health and Ageing for several years and has also addressed medication compliance in Aboriginal communities. His Webster Clamshell system is attributed with helping improved medicine compliance in the Tiwi Islands, where medication collection alone has increased to more than 60 per cent.