Is the Healthcare Industry ready for a sustainable change ?

Wrtitten by, Hannah Belin, Caterina Sansone, Carole Silva and Benjamin Morel

Over the last decade, the global awareness of environmental issues has evoked the urgent need for new sustainable models of managing human activity. Sustainability is not a blurred trend anymore: as reported in a Harvard study conducted on 70 senior executives at 43 global institutional investing firms, shareholders made clear the importance of sustainability in their investments (Eccles and S. Klimenko). More recently, the European Parliament agreed on the "Invest EU Fund" to foster strategic, sustainable, and innovative investments, for the 2021-27 period: overcoming the COVID-19 crisis as well as innovating for a sustainable future will be strongly supported.

The medical device and drug delivery industries, as well as the pharmaceutical industry, are not exempt from this trend: Merck's SMASH Packaging plan, Novo Nordisk's initiative "Circular for Zero" strategic environmental plan, or the recently announced Ypsomed's first zero carbon emission autoinjector are a few of the industry initiatives embracing this trend. The industry is working on its future and is clearly communicating about it, for example during conferences (Pharmapack 2019) or through specialized press releases on Drug Delivery and Environmental Sustainability (OnDrug Delivery - 112).

Exploring future trends is one of the key factors of success to support this innovation strategy. While several initiatives could be identified, little work was found in literature to quantify and monitor the environment awareness in the field of medical device industry. Aware and concerned about market evolution in the sector, EVEON wanted to sponsor a research project on this matter of social interest.

In collaboration with students from the Advanced Master’s Degree in Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Management from Grenoble Business School (France), the study aims to assess the importance of sustainability awareness in the drug delivery environment by collecting industry’ insights from Medical Devices companies (Step 1) and Pharmaceutical companies (Step 2).

Data was collected in 2019 – 2020, pre COVID Crisis. Those results comes from a panel of 43 companies (23 for step 1, 20 for step 2).

Step 1: Insights from Medical Devices companies.

This study showed that the size of companies is a crucial factor with regards to sustainable strategy. According to our findings, it is mostly large companies that are already tackling the sustainability question by building multiple strategies in the field of Ecodesign. It is mostly the case of established companies already having on-the-shelve products, or commercialized ones. For these companies, sustainability is a way of designing a second generation of products aligned with future constrains.

On the other hand, medium and small sized companies are mostly observing or at best just starting to think about questions relating to material sourcing. Without establishing real global actions, they are mostly evaluating new material opportunities, or process changes for a greener purpose. Companies from the panel are still far from considering a full eco-design strategy for the company or thinking about circularity.

Step 2: Insights from Pharmaceutical companies.

When talking of pharmaceutical products, the journey from pre-clinical development to market authorization is considerably long and arduous. As an example, consider that an injectable product in clinical phase 1 today will have a high, likelihood of being impacted by future regulatory mouvements: changes at a European level and a national level are operating (e.g regarding plastic use), and other potential decision in favor of sustainable developments and circularity can be expected in the next decade. Knowing this context is effort even more difficult for pharmaceutical companies and might be associated to strong strategical decision regarding the path to take on this subject.

The questions raised in this study were straightforward:

• are Sustainable values a "must have" or a "nice to have” when selecting a partner for medical device development ?
• are Sustainable values worth paying additional costs, if the new developed product is equivalent with regards to performance and safety when compared to its standard counterpart ?

This study showed that sustainable values are gaining the attention of the pharmaceutical industry: 50% of respondents gave us highly positive feedback. They either consider sustainable values as a "must have" in their future choices, or at least a "nice to have" for which they are willing to pay.

However, the majority do not perceive the immediate need for change, which puts Medical Device companies in a conflictual position. Future regulatory changes in favour of sustainability and the emergence of new solutions on the market are calling for medical device companies to anticipate independently their R&D work today in order to answer the market call on time.

Conclusion and perspectives

The past year emphasized the challenge in conciliating socialawareness and the need for disposable products. The COVID-19 pandemic drove companies to design their product differently, or identify strategies to reuse devices parts: new materials for reusable mask production, decontamination procedure for respirators, masks and other consumables

Even though modalities still need to be defined and properly adjusted according to the evolving regulation, there is no doubt that sustainability will become one of the key trends of medical device and drug delivery markets, prior to being a potential future standard in the next decades.

Companies from both Pharmaceutical and Medical device Industry are already embracing this new challenge and a large majority is at least brainstorming on the best way to answer the question. The future challenges related to this pandemic and more globaly to our impact on the planet will be even more important as we enter in the era were Global human-made mass exceeds all living biomass (Emily Elhacham et al). Future development will be interesting to follow and hopefully in action in this context of mass vaccination.

This study was conducted by Hannah Belin, Caterina Sansone and Carole Silva from Grenoble Ecole de Management (GEM) and sponsored by EVEON during their final year within the Advanced Master Degree in Biotechnology & Pharmaceutical Management. EVEON is proud to be part of its local ecosystem and add this collaboration to pre-existing partnership with Grenoble INP and the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA).

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About EVEON : Based on more than 7 years of research, EVEON is Medical Device company specialized in drug preparation and administration. Solving the technical challenges related to standardized and automated preparation and drug administration for a more efficient and convenient treatment is our core objective. Merging our objectives with evolutions of the industry is a mindset of our team.

About GEM & the Advanced Master Degree in Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Management : Since 2002 this industry focused program allows their participants to develop real-world business skills, develop professional networks, and exchange with senior business professionals from Biotechnology, Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Industry. Students having already completed advanced degrees in Sciences (PhD, PharmD, MD and MSc in biological and chemical sciences) will develop their skills to understand how the forces driving science, technology, and business interact in the real world. To know more about the program, feel free to connect with Mark Chanel and Corinne Chinazzo.