Our member AMDR recently shared some interesting articles and studies with us, concerning reprocessing, the Medical Device Industry, and Health Care Pollution. Read the full articles by following the links below.
A flurry of published studies point to the need for hospitals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and find that the use of remanufactured medical devices may be a "low hanging fruit" solution.
Combining Life Cycle Assessment and Circularity Assessment to Analyze Environmental Impacts of the Medical Remanufacturing of Electrophysiology Catheters
Most importantly, a new article published in the journal, Sustainability, addresses and immediate and timely solution. Researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute in German conducted the most comprehensive Life Cycle Analysis conducted to date comparing a reprocessed devices to its original or “virgin” counterpart. In this case, electrophysiology catheters were studied and found that the reprocessed device to be superior in 13 of 16 categories - including an over 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/2/898
Two studies published recently in Health Affairs underscore the problem, with new data showing the magnitude of wasteful practices at hospitals, particularly looking at greenhouse gas emissions.
Transforming The Medical Device Industry: Road Map To A Circular Economy
The analysis (A. MacNeill, H. Hopf, et. al.) takes perhaps the deepest dive ever looking at what drives the problem and finds that supply chain, in particularly medical devices, cause a surprising high level of the problem. The article calls for medical device makers to transform to a circular economy to help address wasteful and unsustainable healthcare supply chain practices. Link here: https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2020.01118
Health Care Pollution And Public Health Damage In The United States: An Update
The second study (M. Eckelman, J. Sherman, et. al.) finds that US hospitals, through greenhouse gas emissions, already cause a loss of over 388,000 "disability-adjusted life years." There's never been better evidence confirming the hows and whys hospitals make us sick. Link here: https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2020.01247
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