Systemic innovation in sustainable design of medical devices

Abstract

The specific nature and the size of the healthcare sector make its impact on the environment very significant. Over the past years, interest in Sustainable Healthcare has grown globally, and an increasing number of companies is addressing a discipline, Sustainable Design, that is relatively new for the health sector. Design for healthcare must face significant challenges: from the technical, regulatory and ethical complexity, to the lack of a methodological history and the need for an interdisciplinary design approach. The present work shows the methodology and results of an interdisciplinary research on sustainable design for chronic haemodialysis, focusing on the dialysis equipment. Starting from Systemic Design methodology, the equipment has been analysed both as an autonomous system (component and functioning analysis) and as an interacting system (device analysis, interaction, ward management). This allowed to define the main issues and potentialities according to maintenance and end of life, flows management and interactive dynamics.