|
Sustainability An Issue With Medical Product Design By Frank
Esposito | PLASTICS NEWS STAFF
Posted April 20, 2010
WESTLAKE, OHIO (April 20, 2:15 p.m. ET) -- Design pros
are looking for sustainable opportunities in the medical device field -- but
they’re not always easy to find.
“We tend to overlook cycle time, because it’s not in the
direct recyclable direction that people anticipated,” said Mike Fritschy,
senior director with injection molder Nypro Healthcare in Clinton, Mass.
“But there are ways to make half of the components with one-third of the
material.”
Fritschy was one of five design and manufacturing experts
on a panel at the Plastics in Medical Devices conference, held April 12-14
in Westlake.
In some cases, medical device makers have been able to
use recycle material and reduce wall thickness as ways of using less resin
and promoting sustainability, said Chris Kaye, technical innovation director
at U.S. Endoscopy in Mentor, Ohio.
But he added that use of recycled material is less of an
option in disposable medical devices because of the risk of cross
contamination.
There’s also a big difference in the way that
sustainability is viewed in the medical market vs. its image with consumers.
“In the medical industry, the term ‘sustainable design’ doesn’t resonate
with customers,” said Matthieu Turpault, design director with product
development firm Bresslergroup Inc. in Philadelphia. “There’s a lot of push
back.”
Some of that difference is price-based, added Kaye,
citing PVC as “a perfect example.” Many healthcare firms don’t want PVC in
their products because of alleged health risks, but price points for PVC
alternatives are more expensive, he explained.
“When [health care firms] see the price points for PVC
alternatives, they don’t want to talk to you,” Kaye said.
Cultural differences also play a role in the medical market’s view of
sustainability.
“In China, they want a durable good,” Fritschy said.
“They don’t want to throw away a good insulin pen after only one use. That’s
just not part of their culture.”
And although the sustainability trend so far has been
less visible in medical than in consumer, it’s still there, according to
Bill Evans, founder and principal of product development firm Bridge Design
in San Francisco.
“There can be a knee-jerk reaction [in either market] of
just recycling it or wanting to go to corn plastic,” he said.
Conference attendee Len Czuba — a medical market veteran who’s president of
the Czuba Enterprises Inc. consulting firm in Lombard, Ill. — said that he
was “against doing [sustainability] just because it’s the popular thing to
do.”
“If you design a tray that’s too thin, you could ruin a
$600 surgical instrument,” he added.
http://plasticsnews.com/headlines2.html?id=18411 |
