Design for Life Programme and Roadmap
Moving towards a circular economy is going to be challenging and will require collaboration across sectors but will bring a number of benefits including resilience, boosting the local economy, sustainability and financial savings. In October, the Department for Health and Social Care launched the Design for Life Roadmap with the vision of:
By 2045 the UK will have transitioned away from all avoidable single use medtech products towards a functioning circular system, safely transforming the sector to deliver enhanced resilience, increased economic growth, better value for patients and the NHS, and minimised environmental impacts.
Circularity is a system where products are designed to be maintained in their highest value state for as long as possible, through greater reuse, remanufacture and recycling. The programme and roadmap have been developed in collaboration with stakeholders from across the medtech industry, health family and academia.
Challenges
The roadmap sets out six problem statements:
- Leadership and alignment
- Behaviour change
- Commercial incentivisation
- Regulations and standards
- Physical and digital infrastructure
- Transformative innovation
30 actions to address the challenges have been identified including several calls for evidence and research questions to plug knowledge gaps in areas such as decontamination models and material recovery systems.
Collaboration – ReMed circular economy for small medical devices
See our Useful Links section for an example of a current research programme exploring some of these problem statements. The ReMed programme is a funded collaborative research project between Loughborough University, the University of Leeds, and Nottingham Trent University.
ReMed are calling for your support and collaboration. Your involvement will help develop new solutions for reprocessing medical devices, which will improve value for patients and the NHS while reducing environmental impacts. Join in to support a sustainable future for healthcare.
The project aims to create novel design and material specifications, reprocessing technologies, and digital tools to demonstrate the technical, economic and operational viability in the UK of circular lifecycles for small Medical Devices. Case studies of four product categories, serving as reference models, have been utilised to generate new knowledge that can be applied within multiple value chains, reducing the high costs and environmental impacts currently associated with the linear life paths of many such devices.
ReMed are keen to talk to potential collaborators and supporters from Universities, the NHS and other health sector organisations, medical device manufacturers, distributors and the end-of-life reprocessing industry about the ReMed project and shape the intended outcomes to meet healthcare service, societal, and supplier needs.
Links section
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The ReMed programme
An example of a current research programme exploring problem statements related to the Design for Life programme.
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Department for Health and Social Care - Design or Life Roadmap
View the Design for Life roadmap here.
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NHS Supply Chain - Sustainability
Find out more about our sustainability ambitions here.