A delicate balancing act in medical device manufacturing…

This month Polestar has been looking at ESG and environmental sustainability for medical device manufacturers is moving up the agenda.

To be fair, those same manufacturers have got to deliver on their mission critical objectives of ensuring safety and usability to patients and healthcare professionals. It is interesting that Healthcare Acquired Infection (‘infections that you get while receiving treatment at a healthcare facility‘) is typically at a low of 5 – 8% in most developed countries, according to European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. Success in this area has been driven by disposable single-use plastics.

It is a delicate balancing act to satisfy both environmental and safety requirements but progress is being made as this Healthcare article reports…

The healthcare sectors emit 748m metric tonnes of greenhouse gases a year leading to legislation being introduced to reflect new European standards;

• Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (‘WEEE’)
• Restriction on Hazardous Substances (RoHS)
• Registration, Evaluation, and Authorisation of Chemicals (‘REACH’)
• Energy Using Products (EUP).

They address manufacturing processes, labelling, disposal compliance and end-of-life management including recycling.

A bit of a challenge is that medical device disposal is generally carried out by way of incineration, given the contamination issues. Alternative sterilisation methods and associated chemicals are deemed themselves to be unhelpful on the environmental front (carbon emissions).

So where are we seeing success without impairing outcomes? Here are 3 examples;

1. A focus on packaging in terms of sealed trays instead of individuals pouches and laser etching instructions directly on to a tray, mitigating the need for labelling is a clever solution.
2. The introduction of 3D printing technology has been revolutionary linking up cost savings with environmental social governance (‘ESG’), as it can develop product moulds more quickly, refining production parameters and reduce raw material volumes whilst maximising output.
3. Software is now being used to create a virtual real-time mirror environment of the production process which can help enable refinements to the process. An example of this is wastage and the objective of achieving ‘zero defect’, waste -free manufacturing as well as LEAN manufacturing methods.

Environmental Social Governance (‘ESG’) was relatively uncommon at owner-manager/SME level a few years ago yet now an increasingly common requirement by investors, Private Equity, Debt Funds, Asset Management. Not merely a tick-box exercise with spurious claims, it can extend to data collection and policies in place that an organisation, lives, breathes and can point to. For example; areas like staff turnover and corporate carbon footpint. One funder told me their debt lending is cheaper for those deemed to be ESG Compliant. 

To know more about what funders want and indeed other market participants are doing in this regard please feel free to give us a call.