Sustainability Improvements in Drug Delivery with Allison Mack

The carbon footprint of an IV infusion may be more than you think. Hear more from Allison Mack, Medical Education Lead at Enable Injections, about the waste comparison of a standard IV and the enFuse systems in our latest #EnableWearableDelivery executive video series!

Transcript below:

Hi, my name is Allison Mack and I’m the nurse practitioner medical education lead here at enable injections today. I’m going to be talking to you about sustainability and IV waste comparison between IV infusions and our device.

So when people associate an IV infusion or IV equipment a lot of times they think well, I just need a basic bag of meds and a needle. Well, in fact, that’s not the case. You do need a lot more supplies when it comes to inserting an IV.

Here, we have the poll the bag the tubing and extension tubing and all of supplies here listed on or shown on the table. So you have your basic tape your syringe to flush lines. You have to have a barrier here to protect patient or the table that you’re going to be setting yourself up on you have your alcohol wipe shoot bandage and your tag Durham. This is all single-use equipment and it is set up for just one successful IV insertion.

We all know that IV’s never go in the first time easily. There are often multiple attempts and when that happens you actually need more equipment that’s listed here. You’re going to need a new needle you’re going to need more than one alcohol wipe and you’re definitely going to need more bandages.

Keep in mind as well with this equipment laid on the table. Every one of these items is single use so they come individually wrapped. So these are the bags here just to highlight some of the material that each and every single one of these come in they never come in as a kit.

So, what we have here too is a 3D model of some of the waste that’s laying on the table here tied to a bottle here. So, it just goes to show that putting an IV is just simply one needle in one bag. There’s a lot of other things that are involved going into an IV insertion and in infusion.

On the other side. We have our device the end views device. We have two devices here the gas file and the syringe instead of just one IV insertion kit. We actually have two devices here and you can clearly see we still have less equipment less waste than you do for a basic IV. We just have the devices the bases each every time you apply one of the devices you need a single-use alcohol wipe, you need your vial of medication and a syringe depending on the device that you use and each one comes in their carton. that houses the device this is resource none of this may or may not be used depending on where the device is actually placed if it’s placed in the home a lot of times the user the patient themselves may choose not to use gloves if it’s placed in a facility then they standard standardization is typically with gloves. So bottom line is IVs, although they may seem simple and produce less waste that’s not the case at all.

The enFuse® itself is clearly showing less wastage, and hopefully it’s a carbon footprint reduction.

The investigational Infuse system has not been approved for use by any regulatory agency and is currently not approved for commercial use to learn more about the Infuse. Please visit enable injections.com.