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ESCH-R NEWSLETTER SEPTEMBER 2024

September 16, 2024

Kick-off project “Product Now” with TU Delft students

6 September, 2024

On Friday the 6th of September, three groups of 5-6 TU Delft students each started their ESCH-R assignment in the course “Product Now” during an official project Kick-off at the Faculty of Industrial Design at the TU Delft. Over the course of 20 weeks, these students will compete to redesign the Pulse Oximeter.


What is the climate footprint of the Erasmus MC?

© Alexander Santos Lima

4 September, 2024

Junior doctor Ise Lau wins prestigious award for her research on the subject.

Hospitals have a significant impact on the climate. Where does this come from? Junior doctor Ise Lau investigated the emissions of Erasmus MC. She has now won the Student Societal Impact Award 2024 for her project. During her medical master’s program, Ise examined the emissions of all 46 departments of Erasmus MC to identify emission hotspots. The results were enthusiastically received internally and sparked many conversations about sustainability among colleagues.


Sustainability in Ophthalmology

28 August, 2024

On Wednesday August 28th the second meeting in between WP5 and WP2 on the topic of environmental assessments took place at the ‘CERIOS: Center of Expertise, Research and Innovation in Ophthalmic Surgeries of DORC at the TU Delft Campus.

Sustainable Practices in Ophthalmology: Dr. Redmer van Leeuwen Advocates for Greener Intravitreal Injections

26 August, 2024

In a continued push for sustainability within healthcare, Dr. Redmer van Leeuwen highlights the importance of adopting eco-friendly practices in ophthalmology. In an interview with De Oogarts, he discussed updated guidelines from the Project Group for Sustainable Ophthalmology, focusing on how intravitreal injections (IVIs) can be made more sustainable.

Save Paper, Save the Planet! Survey!

Checklist and clipboard task management, online survey form completion Corporate business technology includes a document management system (DMS) and process automation to efficiently manage files.

Currently, Instructions for Use (IFUs) for most medical devices must be provided in the form of paper leaflets. To reduce environmental impact and align with the digital age, the European Union is considering allowing these instructions to be provided in a digital format (eIFU), with a paper version available upon request. This is the case for all professional use devices (i.e. devices that are used by healthcare professionals)!! 

For intraocular lenses used in cataract surgeries alone, this saves over 3 million kg of CO2eq annually, and the reduction in paper usage saves over 2,000 trees per year! 

Healthcare professionals and or other persons working in or employed by a healthcare institution in the European Union are kindly requested to contribute to this survey. Your feedback will be essential to support the decision-making process of EU medical device regulators.

The time required to fill this survey is estimated to take less than 5 minutes.

We are keen to post a bio of everyone involved in this project on the website and in the newsletter as well! 

Please share your bio and picture with maaike@esch-r.org.


Sanne Jansen
Researcher ESCH-R Project Work Package 5

What do I do? 

During my training residency, I became active in the field of sustainability in health care; mainly creating awareness and opportunities for young doctors to implement sustainable practices in their training and workspace. I’m now specialized in functional and reconstructive urology.

This includes doing robot-assisted surgery, which can (but doesn’t always) give great benefits for patients, but seems to come at an environmental cost. This drove me to get involved in the ESCH-R project.

What do I plan to do during ESCH-R?

I will do parttime research next to my clinical activities and explore how we can diminish the environmental impact of robot-assisted surgery using the 10R framework.

About me

I’m Sanne and I live in Utrecht with my partner, 2 daughters and cat. I am an urologist in the UMC Utrecht. In my free time I like to be outdoors when the sun is out, and when weather is more gloomy, I enjoy staying in and getting creative (sowing, knitting)… or just go outdoors anyways. I also love cooking and eating, preferably with family and friends.


Yifan Yang
Researcher ESCH-R Project Work Package 2

Who am I? 

I am a PhD student in Wageningen University & Research, starting from September 2024. I did my bachelor in Chemical Engineering in the China campus of Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, and my master in Environmental Sciences, specialized in Environmental technology in Wageningen University & Research.

What do I do?

I have had some research experience on bioremediation of soil heavy metal contamination, the application of machine learning in anaerobic wastewater treatment, industrial hydrogen production, and real time failure monitoring of geothermal pump. Now I am happy to walk on a new journey in ESCH-R project to help the health sector in Netherlands to be more circular. 

What am I up to during ESCH-R?

I will work on the work package 2 of ESCH-R project, about decision support system for designing  transition pathway towards circular hospitals. This will involve identifying the material hotspots in multiple scales and preparing library of circular interventions, which will later be coupled with transition barriers to build a decision support tool. I will work with researchers from different work packages to test the optimized scenario and aim to come up with stepwise advice for implementation.

Start Communications Network 

We were pleased to gather on Wednesday the 10th of July to kick off the Communications Network for the ESCH-R project. 

During the meeting, we covered key points including; communication-activities, strategic communication plan, press, publications, owned channels: web / socials etc., webinars / podcasts, content package with content about the project / images / corporate style, the timeline, when to meet next and ESCH-R stories.

ESCH-R stories

During the project we are going to actively share stories/interviews with each other that focus on circular/sustainable hospitals and their progress.

We would like to invite all partners to appoint their communication advisor to join us in our efforts. Please contact maaike@esch-r.org.

Looking forward to our continued collaboration!

TNO Meet the expert: Environmental impact of microplastics

Date: September 24, 2024Time: 15:00 – 16:00

On September 24, TNO researchers are hosting an online Meet the Expert session, where they will explain how plastic pollution is assessed, what information is needed for this, and how it affects the results of an LCA. A case study on multilayer packaging will also be discussed. 

TNO has developed a new method to include the impact of plastic pollution in environmental analyses. This method calculates, within a life cycle assessment (LCA), how many microplastics are released during the production, use, and disposal of plastic. 


Seed call October 2024: Co-creating circular innovations for healthcare

Date pressure cooker: September 26, 2024 

Time: 09:30 – 17:00

Deadline proposal: October 18, 2024, 17:00

The Institute for a Circular Society (i4CS) is excited to introduce the next round of Seed Funding. Are you a researcher at TU/e, WUR, UU or UMCU and passionate about advancing circular solutions through inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration and innovative research? Then this is your opportunity to team up with EWUU colleagues, develop collaborative projects and drive impact in the pursuit for a circular society!

Pressure cooker – September 26, 2024 (register before 19 September)

Researchers from the four EWUU alliance universities are invited to develop transdisciplinary research proposals that contribute to bridging the described knowledge gaps. To facilitate the development of relevant research proposals, i4CS will organise a 1-day pressure cooker session where researchers are facilitated to explore collaboration with professionals working in the UMC Utrecht and other researchers from the four institutes and develop research ideas together.

Researchers can apply for a seed fund after attending a one-day pressure cooker session on 26 September 2024. The maximum budget is € 40,000 per proposal; four grants are anticipated. 


ESCH-R Project Advisory Committee (PAC) Meeting

Date: September 27, 2024
The Project Advisory Committee meeting – invitation only


Inaugural speech Prof. dr. ir. Jan-Carel Diehl

Date: October 11, 2024
Time: 15:00 

The inaugural address of prof. dr. ir. Jan-Carel Diehl, will delve into the intersection of design for healthcare accessibility and environmental sustainability. Through a systemic design lens, he will present examples of innovative medical device solutions developed in both high-resource and low-resource settings. These examples illustrate the potential of systemic design in the context of inclusive sustainable healthcare. 

Following the inaugural address, a reception will be held to celebrate the appointment as a professor at Delft University of Technology and a Medical Delta Professor at Erasmus Medical Center.

You are more than welcome to join this celebration!


ESCH-R Annual Scientific Meeting

Date: January 31, 2025

Save the date! Location and agenda will follow.

Also called consortium meeting. This is organized by the early and mid-career researchers and the project board. During this day, the consortium will be updated, knowledge will be shared, and the researchers can show and discuss their data and findings. The consortium meeting is open to all consortium partners. During this day, the PAC will also have its meeting.

Using teams for data sharing within the WP’s

Most of you have started using Teams for their communication and data sharing within their WP. Please note, if you have any procurement docs they can be stored in a separate folder in Teams with limited access or save them within you own institute. Please let us know if you require a separate folder or have any other questions about using Teams. 

If you have sensitive or confidential data, like for instance procurement documents, you can ask Jilske for limited access to a folder of your WP in Teams: 

Jilske Huijben – j.a.huijben@erasmusmc.nl

Would you like to share your ESCH-R news? Whether it’s vacancies, new PhDs, student achievements, research updates, publications, tweets, media appearances, or anything else, we’d love to hear from you! 

Deadline for newsletter submissions: 7 October 2024
Next newsletter: 14 October 2024

Share your updates with us via info@esch-r.org, and we’ll include them in our next newsletter!

ESCH-R 

Email adress: info@esch-r.org
Email adress: ESCH-R@erasmusmc.nl
Website: www.esch-r.org