Hospital Management.net: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Reprocessing Medical Devices (03/31/10):
Reprocessing medical devices has always been a part of the medical-device life cycle, in both the developed and the developing economies of the world. While it has now transformed into an important, cost-saving, sophisticated process in developed economies, since the economic recession, the process is prevalent in countries such as India, China and Brazil in a crude and unsafe form due to their weaker economic situations.
Reprocessing in the developing nations is aimed purely at reducing costs, which often compromises patient safety. In the developed nations, especially in the US and Europe, it is a systematic science regulated by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and one that promises to decrease healthcare spending in the long-term, provide cost savings within a year and provide respite to the shrinking bottom lines of hospitals. The reprocessing of medical devices and the reuse of devices labelled as single use, although in its nascent stage, is expected to change the medical device industry over the next five years….