About Tympany Medical

Tympany Medical is a Galway-based medical technology company that produces sustainable surgical ear, nose, and throat endoscopes. Endoscopy uses camera technology to improve the visualisation of hard-to-reach areas

during surgery.

The Challenge

The healthcare sector produces a lot of waste and contributes significantly towards climate change. In fact, healthcare systems contribute approximately 4%–5% of global greenhouse gas emissions (Rodríguez‐Jiménez et al., 2023). If healthcare were a country, it would be the fifth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet. With medical procedures and technology becoming increasingly complex, coupled with global population growth, the waste produced from the healthcare sector is only projected to grow. The production, delivery, use, and disposal of single-use medical supplies account for about 80% of the industry’s carbon footprint (Greene et al., 2022). Currently, discarded products that are disposable rather than reusable make up 85% of global medical waste, while the remaining 15% is hazardous medical waste that requires considerable management (Greene et al., 2022). High-income countries like Ireland produce up to almost 11 kg of hazardous waste per hospital bed per day (Janik-Karpinska, 2023).

An endoscope is a thin tube with a light and camera at the end. Endoscopy is a medical procedure that involves the insertion of an endoscope into the body to visualize internal organs and structures. Traditional endoscopic equipment is limited by light availability and imaging technology. Traditional equipment is fixed in terms of what can it can see and the angle of view cannot be adjusted. This can be a significant problem in an area with multiple cavities such as the sinus. As these traditional scopes do not provide visibility around corners, four separate scopes, each with different angles (0, 30, 45, and 70 degrees), must be prepared for each surgery. This results in significant waste given that they are removed up to 30 times per procedure. Furthermore, there is a great deal of sterilisation effort required and a lot of additional waste generated from supporting materials, including single-use plastic packaging.

The Circular Opportunity

Tympany Medical has developed the next generation of endoscope called Solascope. Solascope is the world’s first sterile, panoramic endoscope with integrated lens cleaning. The device is currently completing its initial design phase and preclinical validation. Tympany Medical has designed and patented a novel proof-of-concept encapsulation technology. This outer-layer protects the core components of their endoscope, allowing the highly technical internal components to be reused, while significantly reducing the amount of waste produced. Solascope further improves surgical visibility due to its panoramic camera lens while simultaneously reducing the amount of blood obstructing the lens via its inbuilt cleaning system.

Climate Impact

The Solascope will have the following clinical, environmental, and monetary impacts:

Reduced number of scopes prepared per procedure from four to one.

Encapsulation technology with fully integrated manufacturing and remanufacturing technology, making the circular economy for medical devices a reality.

Reduction in cost and environmental impact of risk waste (disposal of risk waste costs between €935 – €2,125 per tonne. The average is €1,530).

Replicability

In 2019, the global health care market was valued at approximately USD $7.7 trillion and was projected to exceed USD $8.5 trillion by 2020 (Deloitte, 2019). Because circularity in healthcare is a relatively new concept, Tympany Medical has the potential to carve out a space in the market and be a leader and exemplar in the circular medical device industry.

Medical waste has a significant environmental impact, and international and national focus is increasingly directed towards sustainability. As a result numerous initiatives to develop circular medical products and practices have been launched. The ReMed project, for example, a collaboration between Loughborough University and the University of Leeds, aims to identify the barriers to the circular use of medical devices and develop potential sustainable solutions.