ATV-SEMAPP Event: Plastic in the Medical Device Industry

Environmental stress cracking is a common cause of unexpected brittle failure of thermoplastic polymers leading to cracks and crazes, and product failure. It is estimated that it counts for 15-30% of all plastic failures during service. It typically happens to amorphous thermoplastics under tensile stress or strain subjected to chemicals from the surroundings.
This work sets up relevant design criteria for specific amorphous thermoplastics in order to build in robustness towards environmental stress failures instead of only relying on tests. The work can easily be transferred to other polymers, chemicals and strains.

Nicolai Schmidt has been working with medical device development and materials for 23 years, specializing in materials selection and covering most aspects of polymeric materials ranging from early development to post marketing and failure analysis.

Nicklas Funk will speak about Ambu’s journey with implementing practices and design principles in Global Innovation to design for a circular economy. This will give you insight into their motor for focusing and scaling sustainable innovation, as they are looking into running 30 development projects in parallel. Results with speed, cross-functional collaboration and integrity will be the key factors for success and prosperity across their broad portfolio of products within markets of ‘Visualization’, ‘Anastasia’, ‘Patient Monitoring and Diagnostics’.

Nicklas Christian Funk holds a M.Sc. in design and innovation from DTU and has worked in research and consulting, engaging Danish and international manufacturing companies in accelerating the transition to a Circular Economy. Since he joined Ambu in 2020, he has been focusing on implementing practices of sustainability in the design work in Global Innovation.

Via the Triple Bottom Line, environmental stewardship has always been a part of the Novo Nordisk DNA. However, in early 2019 a new and updated environmental strategy was launched with the title ‘Circular for Zero’ taking the next steps into sustainability of business operations, R&D, production and treatment of diabetes and other chronic conditions. With inspiration from The Ellen MacArthur foundation renewed focus was put on their use of materials for medical devices among many other aspects.
In the presentation, Jesper Bøgelund will speak about how they have tried to translate the abstract ideas of a circular economy into concrete and doable actions in their early-phase device R&D projects.

Jesper Bøgelund holds a M. Sc. in materials chemistry from Copenhagen University and has been working as a consultant within plastic materials, processes and products since 1999. Since he joined Novo Nordisk in 2013 the environmental stewardship and life cycle assessment of new device concepts have been increasingly at the core of his work.

In this presentation Etienne Perrony will discuss the structure and chemistry of thermoplastic elastomers, explain the compounding process and go through the main features and measurements of TPEs, including regulatory aspects. With the increased use of over-molding in healthcare applications Etienne Perrony will give details of this process and the associated benefits, concluding with a discussion on TPEs in comparison to rubber.

Etienne Perrony has worked for Avient Corporation for three years and focuses on materials for use in healthcare applications. He has 11 years of industry experience working with a variety of plastic injection molding companies that specialize in the healthcare market.

The ambition for the new sustainable materials being introduced into the LEGO elements is not to compromise the safety, consumer-perceived quality and durability. Pursuit of durable products are both of importance in high-quality toys and medico alike.
The focus in this presentation will be on polyesters that are known to undergo hydrolysis, physical ageing and photo-oxidation, identifying and extrapolating the influence of each individual degradation mechanism into a material criterion.

Emil Andersen has been an Industrial PhD student at the LEGO Group since 2017, focusing on durability of sustainable polyesters. After turning in his thesis summer 2020, he works in the R&D Team, focusing on developing and evaluating the sustainable materials for the LEGO elements.

• Plastics in healthcare – figures and applications
• Why PVC is king in medical plastics
• Corona virus – new PVC applications and more waste
• Recycling of PVC-based medical devices – case stories
• Barriers to recycling

Ole Grøndahl Hansen is Project Manager at PVCMed Alliance (since 2014) & CTO at PVC Information Council Denmark (since 1995) and member of the VinylPlus communications committee. Ole is the spokesperson for the European PVC industry in Denmark. He has been working with PVC-related communications for over a quarter of a century. Main areas of interests are medical devices, recycling, design and art.

How can surface modification help fight Covid-19?
Learn how surface modified polymer products can be employed in the global fight against Covid-19; from growth of airway epithelial cells to PCR- or antibody testing and 3D cell culture vaccine models.
We will be investigating polymers modified by gamma irradiation, plasma treatment and wet chemical processes.

Sune Lund Sporring is a chemist with a PhD in Medicine from the University of Copenhagen. Sune has 20 years’ experience in the medical industry and has authored several international patent families. Sune is co-founder of two University spin-outs before transitioning to University research and now Corporate science.

Medical devices are mostly made of polymers and must be able to administer a drug safely otherwise the health of the patients is threatened. Tribology is an important factor in a device as too low/high friction or wear can decrease the dose accuracy.

In the case where the patient has to dose manually, low friction is also a question of convenience. Many medical devices are produced in millions and mostly very simple polymers are used. This challenges the robustness with regards to tribology in every one of the devices.

The present talk will introduce the basics of polymer friction and wear and present some of the solutions to tribological challenges encountered in Novo Nordisk Device R&D.

Ion works 1/3 of his time as Associate Professor in NanoTribology at Mechanical Engineering, Technical University of Denmark and 2/3 of his time as Research Scientist in Tribology, Novo Nordisk, Device R&D.