Professor and Department Chair Bucknell University Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, United States
Introduction:: ABET criteria 2 and 4 acknowledge the need to consider environmental factors and contexts when applying engineering design and considering the impacts of engineering solutions. In addition, medical device companies, like other industries, are under increasing pressure to incorporate triple bottom line sustainability into their decision-making processes. However, medical device product development typically emphasizes safety and effectiveness to meet FDA requirements, which can be in tension with the desire to make an environmentally friendly product. To identify ways to reduce environmental impact without sacrificing safety and effectiveness, biomedical engineers must understand how their product can affect the environment across its entire lifecycle (from design and materials selection to manufacturing and use to end-of-life disposal). To address this need, an activity was developed to introduce biomedical engineers to the concept of sustainable design through the exercise of proposing and evaluating improvements to an existing medical device with consideration for environmental, economic, and social sustainability priorities. This exercise utilizes open-access Design for Sustainability resources from the VentureWell website (https://venturewell.org/tools_for_design/introduction/), and incorporates concepts related to whole system mapping, design for the circular economy, and development of the entrepreneurial mindset. Learning goals for this stand-alone exercise include:
Create a whole system map and use it to identify opportunities to improve the sustainability of a medical device over its lifecycle.
Consider environmental, economic, and social sustainability priorities when proposing and evaluating improvements to a medical device.
Communicate how a proposed medical device improvement will add value for both the customer and the company.
Materials and Methods:: In this Design for Sustainability Exercise, students complete a sustainability assessment of an over-the-counter commercially-available medical device by following these steps (approximate times for each step are included in parentheses):
Create a whole system map for their over-the-counter medical device (40 min).
Set priorities based on a generalized life cycle assessment (LCA) figure (Figure 1), the company’s mission and values, and user needs (10 min).
Brainstorm solutions on system map, addressing prompts related to environmental, economic, and social sustainability (60-90 min).
Choose winning idea based on identified priorities, and create a design abstract for the final solution that communicates its added value to the customer and company (60 min).
More details on each step are provided in a detailed handout, including background information related to each brainstorming prompt for step 3. Students are asked to brainstorm ways to eliminate or mitigate the environmental impact of each node in their map, ways to improve circular economy (by changing the device or business model), and ways to improve social sustainability (with an emphasis on improving customer access and quality of life). Materials provided for this activity included a large piece of paper for creating the whole systems map (step 1), four different colors of post-it notes (one color for creating the systems map, and three other colors for brainstorming steps), pens for writing on the post-its, and a computer for documenting their process and final solution for submission. This activity was evaluated primarily based on completion of all steps of the process.
Results, Conclusions, and Discussions:: This Design for Sustainability Exercise was implemented in a junior-level required pre-design class with 18 students, where teams were tasked with proposing improvements to their assigned over-the-counter medical device after evaluating the device from a variety of perspectives. This activity was designed to fit into one week of the course (two hours of lecture, three hours of lab). In the first lecture hour, students were introduced to triple bottom line sustainability, life cycle assessment, and whole system mapping, and were provided with an overview of the steps of the design for sustainability activity. As a brief in-class activity, they also researched their company’s mission and looked for evidence of a commitment to sustainability on the company website. In the second lecture hour, students completed the first two steps of the activity: creating the whole system map and setting priorities specific to their device and company. In the three-hour work session, the teams brainstormed potential solutions on their system map to encourage them to consider the entire life cycle of their product. After generating ideas for 1.5 hours, the students completed the rest of the process, converging down to their top 3-5 ideas using dot voting before using a decision matrix to evaluate their top ideas against the priorities previously identified and selecting the best solution. Students were able to complete the entire process from generating the whole system map to documenting a final solution in under 4 hours. Example student work will be shared.
This Design for Sustainability Exercise can be inserted as a stand-alone unit into a variety of biomedical engineering courses, and is flexible in its implementation. It can be completed using large paper (or a white board) and colored post-it notes, or using collaborative software like Google Slides. It can be completed in class or as homework. In addition, the activity (currently designed to be completed in 5-6 hours) can be shortened by eliminating some steps, such as by providing the students with design priorities and/or the whole system map, reducing the number of brainstorming prompts, or ending the process with identification of the top 3-5 solutions.
Acknowledgements (Optional): : The author would like to thank the KERN Family Foundation and KEEN (the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network) for providing the Engineering Unleashed Fellowship that supported implementation and dissemination of this Design for Sustainability Exercise, and Jeff Plumblee, VentureWell Program Officer, for coaching during exercise development as follow-up to the Infusing Sustainability into the Curriculum KEEN/VentureWell Workshop.
References (Optional): : VentureWell. (n.d.). Tools for Design and Sustainabilty. Retrieved April 24, 2023, from https://venturewell.org/tools_for_design/introduction/
