An Efficient Screening Life Cycle Assessment Approach: Assessing the Environmental Impact of Dialysis Treatments

There is an increasing demand for information on the environmental impact of medical devices from decision-makers in healthcare. Performing 'comprehensive' life cycle assessments (LCA) can be time and resource intensive to undertake. We present a screening LCA approach (scLCA) to streamline the LCA process for device manufacturers, intended to provide comparable results to more comprehensive assessments.

The scLCA is similar to the 'comprehensive' LCA in scope (cradle to grave) and methodology. In the scLCA two key changes are made to the LCA methodology: the use of standardized models for transport and product end-of-life. Furthermore, result interpretation is via a hotspot analysis and the validation process does not include an external review. The application of scLCAs is presented here with examples from three dialysis machines, where the functional unit is the production and operation of one dialysis machine over its lifetime.

All three dialysis machines showed similar hotspots, with the main drivers of environmental impact being water and electricity consumption during use. Using the scLCA is an efficient approach to perform environmental assessments on multiple products. The results of the scLCA provide an informative hotspot analysis that can be used to target improved sustainability of the device's manufacturing and distribution process.

The scLCA makes performing environmental assessments more feasible for manufacturers while generating results comparable to 'comprehensive' LCAs.