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LIFE-MED FINAL CONFERENCE
On the 18th of May 2017 the Life-MED project final conference has been held from 9 am to 12.45 pm at the Dipartimento di Ingegneria Meccanica e Industriale – Sala Consiliare, via Branze, 38 Brescia.
The focus was on the achievements in both Italy and Romania, but there was also a space to talk about circular economy.
The conference was introduced by Alessandro Zani, Anna Brescianini, Mattero Severgnini and Patrick Ouriaghli. They are members of the partners of the project which are Social Cooperative CAUTO, Legambiente Lombardia, University of Brescia, Medicus Mundi Attrezzature and Ateliere Fara Frontiere.
The meeting was also an occasion for a discussion on the proposal of guidelines for the management of medical WEEE and on the new challenges of the circular economy and its role for scientific innovation and for society.
FINAL RESULTS
The LifeMED project, which ends on the 30th of June 2017, has achieved very significant and effective results. The partners of the project identified 80 beneficiary institutions in Europe to which the equipment revised was donated. The aim was to create a system for the recovery and repurchase of medical equipment. Among the institutions involved in Italy, Asst of Crema was one of the most virtuous.
During these 3 years of the project in Italy we have the followers outcomes:
- 162 home healthcare equipment and 254 medical equipment donated;
- 128 devices and 52 small equipment for personal use distributed;
- 342 medical equipment revised;
- 45 tons of waste avoided;
- 120 tons of waste treated;
Whereas in Romany the results are:
- 189 medical institutions accessed;
- 21 tons of medical WEEE collected;
- 1875 medical equipment treated;
- 17 tons of WEEE Med prepared for re-use;
During the Life-MED final conference were presented the guidelines for the presentation of the state of the art and of the assessment of the management of electromedical equipment.
To find out more about the topics covered in the guidelines, you can consult the full file – download
SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ANALYSIS
One of the actions of the project was the analysis of long-term social and economic sustainability.
The social impact was assessed by gathering data with questionnaires filled out by stakeholders involved in the project (donors, beneficiaries, partners) with the aim of analyzing the following aspects:
- increased employment due to new recruitment by beneficiaries during the project;
- further increase in employment, once the new integrated management system for discarded medical equipment will be fully operational after the end of the project;
- access to more advanced medical institutions by citizens of all European countries.
The economic impact was assessed by analyzing 3 scenarios:
- MED0 pre-project scenario;
- MED1 post-project scenario with focus on donations/deliveries in Europe;
- MED2 post-project scenario with donations/deliveries of selected types of equipment, including devices for private use, both in Europe and in non-European Market.
It has been shown that both post-project scenarios determine an economic advantage for the actors involved. Specifically, the MED2 scenario involves a significant reduction of costs for donors and recipients and an increase in incomes for partners with a role in the collect and deliver process. From the economic analysis it emerges that one of the most interesting actions is to assess/repair and distribute to privates devices and small equipment: in fact, more than 270 devices have been distributed over the entire project.
PROPOSAL FOR A FINAL RESOLUTION
On the morning of May 18, the resolution on the management of discarded medical equipment was presented to the Environment, Territory and Public Works – Parliamentary committee of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, signed by Maria Chiara Gadda, Miriam Cominelli, Raffaella Mariani, Piergiorgio Carrescia and Massimiliano Manfredi. The resolution commits the Government to promote the donation of good-working medical devices to non-profit organizations, aiming to involve in the process social actors and still reducing waste production and optimizing the use of goods that have not yet reached the end of life.
The resolution is available at the following link: