The extent to which circular economy principles have been applied in the design of medical devices for low-resource settings in Sub-Saharan Africa. A systematic review

Frontiers in Sustainability

Sustainability

Roos Marieke Oosting¹  Karlheinz Tondo Samenjo²  Conny Bakker²  Jan Carel Diehl² 

[1] Department of Biomechanical Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands;Department of Sustainable Design Engineering, Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands;

关键词: circular economy principles;    medical device design;    low-resource settings;    Sub-Saharan Africa;    product design;   

DOI  :  10.3389/frsus.2023.1079685

 received in 2022-10-25, accepted in 2023-03-31,  发布年份 2023

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Healthcare facilities in low-resource settings in Sub-Saharan Africa are plagued with issues of non-functional and obsolete medical devices, which ultimately end up prematurely disposed of as waste. With increasing healthcare demands, stopping medical device disposal is imperative. One way to achieve this is to leverage circular economy principles in designing medical devices. Circular economy principles aim to retain products and their constituent materials to be reused over time in the economic system. However, to what extent this has been applied in designing medical devices specifically for low-resource settings in Sub-Saharan Africa is missing in literature. Based on a systematic review of 29 out of 1,799 screened scientific papers, we identified the use of circular economy principles of durability, maintenance, repair, and upgrade in designing medical devices for this setting. Whether these principles were intentionally applied from a circular economy approach could not be inferred in this study. The motivational basis for using these principles was to ensure medical device longevity to providing healthcare. No attention was given to the circular economy principles of refurbishment, remanufacturing, and recycling, ensuring that device components and constituent materials are recovered. These study findings serve as a launchpad for exploring how circular principles can be used to support the design of medical devices for low-resource settings in Sub-Saharan Africa. Academicians and designers of medical devices can leverage this research to contribute towards developing medical devices that support access to healthcare for people in low-resource settings and preserve earth's finite resources.

【 授权许可】

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Copyright © 2023 Samenjo, Oosting, Bakker and Diehl.