• Question: Is what you invent Enviro-Friendly? If not, how do you think you can make them Enviro-Friendly?

    Asked by Mike Thompson to Julia, Krishnaa, Laura, Rebecca, Si on 20 Jun 2016. This question was also asked by Ben Sims.
    • Photo: Rebecca Pullon

      Rebecca Pullon answered on 20 Jun 2016:

      Hi Mike,

      The primary clinical aim of my research is to create an early warning system to identify potential complications in pregnant women before they get too bad. This would be a paper chart on the end of a patient bed. So environmentally friendly if the paper gets recycled! Ultimately all patient notes get stored though, so not really environmentally friendly. Eventually we want to implement this system electronically, so everything will be entered and recalled through a tablet. This is similar to the other systems we create – eg. an app to measure respiratory rate from a smartphone. So the hardware needs to get recycled, but what we ‘invent’ leaves no trail.

      Rebecca

    • Photo: Laura O'Shea

      Laura O'Shea answered on 22 Jun 2016:

      Hi Mike and Ben
      We try to make stuff as environmentally-friendly as possible, but like a lot of people, there’s some way to go. From my point of view, its about trying to make sure we only manufacture what we need and that those manufacturing processes don’t use nasty chemicals and also minimise waste. It would also be great to close the loop more often, so that we recycle more products at their end-of-life to make new ones.

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