Launched in January 2025, the three-year, EPSRC Digitally Enabled Circular Healthcare Innovation (DECHI) Research Programme unites leading interdisciplinary research expertise from the Universities of Exeter, Sheffield, and Cambridge. Led by Professor Fiona Charnley, Professor of Circular Innovation and the Co-Director of Exeter Centre for the Circular Economy, the programme researches new digital approaches to expedite the adoption of circular innovation within the MedTech sector.
Researchers on the project will work with industry partners and NHS Trusts to investigate how digital technologies can accelerate the transition to a more sustainable and resilient healthcare system through data analytics, simulation and modelling techniques, and other technological advancements including sensorisation, enhanced sterilisation, and asset tracking.
The programme focuses on four workstreams:
WS1. Build the Medtech evidence base: Develop a taxonomy-led data search, pooling and analysis methodology, across a diverse range of product use cases to quantify and visualise the environmental, economic and social benefits of circular innovation in the transition towards a net zero healthcare system.
WS2. Sensorisation & simulation: Use advances in sensorisation, simulation and optimisation, from across sectors, to identify and demonstrate the optimal circular intervention to prolong the life of MedTech devices and retain and reuse critical materials within healthcare.
WS3. Digitally enabled delivery: Identify and analyse how advances in digital technology can accelerate the adoption of circular innovation processes and influence the development of more environmentally sustainable and circular healthcare technologies of the future.
WS4. Whole system adoption: Define and model the system-level enablers, including policy, regulation, behaviour change and business models, required to scale and amplify the adoption of a digitally enabled circular healthcare system.
MedTech Spotlight Report
Accelerating Circular Economy Adoption
This report advocates for a paradigm shift to a circular economy, rejecting the linear ‘take-make-waste’ model. The circular economy, rooted in principles of waste elimination, material circulation at peak value, and natural capital regeneration, presents a transformative opportunity for the MedTech sector.
There will also be a focus on stakeholder engagement through collaborating with wider research programmes, including DICE Network+, ReMed Project and DHSC Design for Life programme, and knowledge sharing through workshops & webinars.
We would value extending our network and welcome collaboration opportunities. For more information and to join our mailing list, please contact DECHImail@exeter.ac.uk and follow us on LinkedIn.
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