On Friday April 25th, Fiene Kuiper, Master Student Integrated Product Design at the TU Delft, presented her graduation project called: “Sensing a Sustainable Future”. During her graduation project Fiene has analyzed and redesigned pulse oximeters from a circularity perspective in hospitals.

In Dutch hospitals, pulse oximeters have one of the biggest impacts on the environmental footprint of all disposables. In order to design a solution, it is important to identify how big this footprint is, and how design choices can limit this footprint.

Pulse oximeters already exist in both single use as reusable forms, which are both actively used in hospitals. Pulse oximeters already exist in both single use as reusable forms, even though reusables are considered more environmentally beneficial, hospitals struggle to transition fully towards these devices. Therefore product and system barriers that inhibit this change were identified and tackled, both in future product design as interventions that can be implemented now.

Her project was supervised by Prof.dr.ir. J.C. Diehl – Project board member ESCH-R – and Dr.ir. Sonja Paus-Buzink from TU Delft.