Description
In the burgeoning field of sustainability, there is a pressing need for healthcare to understand the increased environmental and economic impact of healthcare products and services. The overall aim of this dissertation is to assess the sustainability of commonly used medical products, devices, and services as well as to identify strategies for making easy, low cost changes that result in environmental and economic savings for healthcare systems. Life cycle environmental assessments (LCAs) and life cycle costing assessments (LCCAs) will be used to quantitatively evaluate life-cycle scenarios for commonly utilized products, devices, and services. This dissertation will focus on several strategic and high impact areas that have potential for significant life-cycle environmental and economic improvements: 1) increased deployment of reprocessed medical devices in favor of disposable medical devices, 2) innovations to expand the use of biopolymers in healthcare materials and devices, and 3) assess the environmental and economic impacts of various medical devices and services in order to give healthcare administrators and employees the ability to make more informed decisions about the sustainability of their utilized materials, devices, and services.
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Details
Title
- Sustainable solutions for medical devices and services
Contributors
- Unger, Scott (Author)
- Landis, Amy E. (Thesis advisor)
- Bilec, Melissa (Committee member)
- Parrish, Kristen (Committee member)
- Arizona State University (Publisher)
Date Created
The date the item was original created (prior to any relationship with the ASU Digital Repositories.)
2015
Subjects
- Environmental engineering
- Sustainability
- Civil Engineering
- healthcare
- medical
- Products
- Services
- Industrial ecology
- Medical instruments and apparatus--Environmental aspects.
- Medical instruments and apparatus
- Medical instruments and apparatus--Materials.
- Medical instruments and apparatus
- Disposable medical devices--Reuse--Environmental aspects.
- Disposable medical devices
- Medical care--Environmental aspects.
- Medical care
Resource Type
Collections this item is in
Note
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thesisPartial requirement for: Ph.D., Arizona State University, 2015
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bibliographyIncludes bibliographical references (pages 122-131)
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Field of study: Civil and environmental engineering
Citation and reuse
Statement of Responsibility
by Scott Unger