At the conference room, the construction of the new hospital sat the scene for the project kick-off of SUSUES (Sustainable Use of Single Use Endoscopes), where leadpartner, Zealand University Hospital, stood ready with an agenda for the day.
It was the chief of surgery, Lasse Bremholm Hansen, who welcomed all the partners, that attended the official launch of the three-year project. The agenda provided opportunities to share ideas, expectations and experience, while strengthening the collaborative work and mutual commitment in the objective of the project. The consortium represents a variety of expertise, including clinical partners, experts of sustainability and reutilization, manufacturing companies and partners of qualitative analysis of user experience, all of which leads to highly constructive discussions across professional capabilities.
The basis of the project was made evident when the environmental impact of the health-care system and the hospitals was presented. A reduction of this is not yet sufficient, and does is in more cases presents as a challenge to for the health-care system to undertake. A system that experience a lack of available resources and have to work hard to keep up. The necessary effort needs to be a coordinated and fact-based effort that can make it more manageable to prioritize the transition to sustainability for the departments under pressure.
The projects was granted 12.6 million DKK for the development of an operational model, that will be used to utilize analyses of life cycles in the health-care system, and it will simultaneously, through a comparative study of reusable and disposable endoscopes, develop and test the model so that it can be used in several hospitals at the end of the project. When the three years have passed, the ambition is that the project will have developed a model that can help hospital departments carry out holistic analyses of the potential of sustainability, and thereby reduce the overall climate impact.
From life cycle to quality
Along the way, participants had the opportunity to gain insight into the various focused efforts that will be investigated and used in the project.
Theresa Thomasson, from the partnering organization Circular Action Tools, gave an introduction to the LCA method and how it can be used to uncover the environmental impact, while the clinical quality studies and the approach were presented by Lasse Bremholm from Zealand University Hospital.
The Circular Network partner Stena Recycling presented perspectives of the recycling potential of disposable endoscopes, and participants got to experience and see examples of recycling plastic waste.
The day ended with a tour of the department of Endoscopy at Zealand University Hospital, where several upcoming activities will be initiated.
