A Medical Equipment Lifecycle Framework to Improve Healthcare Policy and Sustainability

Abstract

The healthcare sector is struggling to become more environmentally friendly compared to other industries, evidently seen by the contribution to global emissions. These struggles have elicited some research on sustainable methods regarding the lifecycle of medical devices. Indeed, the World Health Organization (WHO) encourages the reuse of equipment and ethical donations, namely for the sake of the environment and sustainable global health. However, there is a lack of synthesis–multiple greener alternatives to the current healthcare system are developing without a connection to each other, hindering an increase in sustainability. Thus, there is a lack of global organization and standardization in medical equipment lifecycles. Inspired by the findings and guidelines of the Safe and Sustainable Medical Equipment Supply Subgroup (SASMES) of the International Rotary Fellowship of Healthcare Professionals, we created the Re-processing Medical Equipment: Rotarian Research Group for the Environment (Re-MERGE) to expand on these challenges. Re-MERGE follows the life cycle of medical devices in the United States of America through its initial stages of classification and various regulatory pathways, the middle stage of post-market requirements, and the end stage of disposal or donation and reprocessing. Our findings indicate that current medical device end-stages are inefficient, damaging to the environment, and burdensome to donation recipients; however, existing processes can provide improvements to medical device end-stage methods by drastically reducing environmental damage, improving healthcare globally, and increasing sustainability in the field. We identify that more research is needed to connect the implications of different medical device end stages. Additionally, we encourage the findings to be implemented to create more sustainable, effective methods of medical device disposal, donation, and reprocessing.