Device Med: How Remanufacturing of Medical Devices Helps to Protect the Climate

Plastics have become an indispensable part of our lives. By staying in the cycle for a long time, the products can minimize resource consumption. Many medical devices that have only been approved by the manufacturer for one-time use also contain plastics that can be reprocessed. In a study commissioned by the medical remanufacturing company Vanguard, Fraunhofer Umsicht examined the positive environmental effects of remanufacturing.
A circular economy should make it possible to extract fewer fossil resources, minimize waste products and emissions, design products intelligently for their recycling and thus reduce end-of-life losses. In order to show the environmental effects of the manufacture of products and materials, the Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety and Energy Technology Umsicht prepares life cycle assessments or life cycle assessments for customers from various industries. In the recently published study on behalf of Vanguard, the research team compared the production of an electrophysiology catheter (cardiac catheter) with a restored catheter – using so-called medical remanufacturing – in particular with regard to their impact on global warming and their consumption of resources. The result: Medical remanufacturing reduces CO₂ footprint by over 50 percent and resource consumption by over 28 percent. . .

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English translation courtesy of AMDR.