GlobalData, a data and analytics company, on Wednesday said that the medical device industry needs to do enough to be more environmentally sustainable.
As climate change is a persistent and important issue globally, many counties and companies are trying their best to implement policies that will combat the rapid warming of the earth, but some industries are lagging behind others, the company claims.
Reportedly, the medical device industry has been slow to change its sustainability practices, largely due to strict regulations.
“Risk and quality management standards are often uncompromising due to the nature of the products, as changes cannot be made at the expense of the population’s health. This reflects in GlobalData’s recent poll, in which 58% of the respondents said that the medical device industry is not doing enough to be more environmentally sustainable,” the company said in a statement on Wednesday.
“While the medical device industry faces stringent regulations, especially in comparison to other industries, medical device companies and the healthcare industry as a whole should still be environmentally conscious where possible,” Alexandra Murdoch, Medical Analyst at GlobalData, said in a statement.
According to the data and analytics company, there are many ways that medical device companies could improve their environmental sustainability practices, beginning with the reduction of waste.
Moreover, healthcare facilities generate a lot of waste through disposable devices, such as sharps, trace chemotherapy, and pathological waste. The use of single use products has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, as it has greatly increased the use of products like masks and gloves, it stated.
“Hospitals also have the highest energy intensity of any publicly funded building, so if they were to switch to renewable energy, they could have a significant impact. Additionally, the use of digital health could help companies with their sustainability goals. Digital health tools allow healthcare practitioners to continue to provide health care to patients, maximizing value while minimizing resources. The use of digital health tools such as telehealth also helps to prevent healthcare related travel, thus restricting CO2 emissions. Similarly, cloud services can contribute to good sustainability practices by saving the materials needed for on-site hardware, which also can help reduce CO2 emissions,” Murdoch said.
According to GlobalData, the consensus is that the medical device industry is not doing enough to be more environmentally sustainable, some companies are implementing different measures to try to reduce their CO2 emissions.
Recently, Philips created an EcoDesign program and it plans to improve the energy efficiency of its products, use fewer resources and more recycled content, avoid the use of hazardous substances, design for circularity, and make its packaging easy to recycle and reuse.
“If more companies in the medical device industry can develop similar programs to the EcoDesign program, the medical device CO2 emissions could potentially be reduced. Environmental sustainability is becoming more significant every day, and medical device companies need to act soon to reduce waste and CO2 emissions,” added.
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