Medical Technologies & Sustainability: innovations for a greener healthcare
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Did you know that if the global healthcare sector were a country, it would be the fifth largest emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet? With a quantity of medical waste produced in Europe of 2.61 kg/bed/day, one is to wonder how it could be otherwise…
In that context, our colleague Thomas Neron from the Université de Liège GeMMe, delivered an eye-opening presentation titled “Circular economy of critical and precious metals in hospitals” yesterday during the beMedTech workshop on sustainability “innovations for a greener healthcare”.
The healthcare sector is a significant generator of waste, particularly in the form of single-use plastics and medical textiles, due to strict hygiene, sterility, and infection-control requirements. An overlooked fact is that hospitals, clinics, and laboratories are also important consumers of critical raw materials, a number of which are targeted by the European #CRMAct. The GeMMe presented the work by Thomas and Hassan Bouzahzah on the Scanning Electron Microscopy characterization of invasive medical devices and illustrated how #platinum, #iridium, #titanium, #niobium, #nickel and #copper amongst others play a key role in the functionality of essential modern medical technologies.
It was exciting to share these insights and learn how other talented teams contribute with their disruptive innovations for a greener healthcare through the reduction of medical waste in Belgium.
Many thanks to beMedTech and Koen Bruylant for their warm welcome and for the opportunity to contribute to such an important societal topic.
