Continuing to Reduce the Environmental Impact of Medical Products

Imagine a world where technology engineering looks at the environmental impact of each product. As GE celebrates the 5-year anniversary of our ecomagination initiative, GE Healthcare has committed to reduce the average energy consumption of new ultrasound products by 25% by 2012, based on the energy used in 2005.

With support from the European Commission, GE Healthcare and a group of 10 other medical device manufacturers within the European Coordination Committee of the Radiological, Electromedical and Healthcare IT industry (COCIR), have proactively committed to a self-regulatory initiative for eco-design of medical imaging equipment. This collaboration among regulators and manufacturers will generate innovation and reduce energy demand. It also helps to avoid regulators over-restricting the industry, yet meeting the needs of society.

“This announcement paves the way for GE Healthcare, our customers and the environment to benefit from improvements in energy efficiency,” said Mike Harsh, vice president and chief technology officer of GE Healthcare. “We see this as a terrific opportunity to demonstrate the innovation of the Company’s technology development and furthermore improve the access to and the quality of healthcare products all over the world.”

The new generation of medical devices can help conserve impressive power consumption throughout the industry. For example, imagine that 700 Voluson™ E8 ultrasound systems were brought into service in the EU in a given year. Due to decreased scan time and lower power consumption, the annual electricity savings compared to previous versions would total more than 400,000 kWh/year, which is enough to power more than 90 EU houses for one year. And that’s just one product line; imagine if the effect were multiplied across every model in the industry. The overall impact would be very significant.

The European Union Eco-Design for Energy Related Products (ErP) directive establishes a framework for setting resource efficiency standards by product platform and to increase focus on the life cycle of the product during the design stage. For products in scope of the ErP directive, rigorous enforcement measures are put in place by the government to ensure stringent requirements are met and environmental improvements are achieved before a product is commercialized. As an alternative to mandated regulation, the ErP Directive provides for an industry to propose self-regulation.

Ultrasound will be the first product area implementing the initiative. Additional diagnostic imaging modalities are planned to join the voluntary initiative each year based on the principles of eco-design laid out in the COCIR self-regulatory initiative framework.