Single-use, a Net Zero hero?
When medtech companies need to evidence that sustainability and innovation can go hand-in-hand — they come to Pd-m.
IQ Endoscopes approached Pd-m with a challenge few consultancies were equipped to solve: validate the environmental and clinical impact of single-use endoscopes compared to reusable ones. This wasn’t a typical carbon footprinting exercise. It demanded deep understanding of medical device innovation, lifecycle analysis, and the complex realities of clinical care pathways.
Pd-m was selected because of our unique leadership in sustainable innovation for healthcare — and the results proved why.
A three-phase programme to turn ambition into evidence
The “Endoscope Carbon Impact” project was structured around three integrated work packages, tailored to IQ Endoscopes’ goal of demonstrating that early intervention with single-use scopes could deliver measurable environmental and clinical benefits — while building a compelling case for procurement decision-makers.
Phase 1: Understanding the product footprint
We began by working closely with IQ Endoscopes to quantify the full cradle-to-grave carbon footprint of their G200 endoscope. Using primary data on materials, manufacturing processes, and logistics, we calculated emissions at a component level and delivered a full Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) report following the ISO 14067 structure.
Product impact by lifecycle stage – a very useful high-level view to guide where focus needs to be made to reduce product impact.
We first met Tim Bailey, when he came to us with an idea for a product that he wanted turning into a CAD model. At the time Tim owned a large facilities management firm specialising in warehouse maintenance. Having maintained warehouses up and down the country, Tim had seen first-hand the inefficiencies and expense of running big overhead heaters. And with every worker having individual temperature needs, he could see keeping everyone warm and happy from a single heat source, simply wasn’t working.
Overhead propane gas heater
Anti-fatigue mat
It was then he noticed most warehouse operatives stand on anti-fatigue mats, so thought why not combine the two and make a floor mat that heats the individual as well?
We spent a lot of time discussing his early designs, showing him that designing and launching a product isn’t as simple as creating a CAD model, it needs a strategic approach. We scoped out a full product development process, with each stage informing the next, to achieve the most successful outcome. We took the project back a few steps to ensure the foundations and assumptions were qualified. User-research and feasibility reviews, were followed with a series of testing procedures we developed to validate each iteration of prototype.
We helped prospective customers experience early design concepts through a Virtual Reality (VR) warehouse environment
Fabricated metalwork prototypes were built, tested, iterated and re-built.
Testing in a realistic ambient temperature meant going to an Ice Cube factory to test the heat element through thermal imaging cameras
For what is a brilliantly simple concept, the product development process threw up a considerable amount of challenges: How do you stop a user from rolling their office chair directly on the mat? How do you heat rubber and not get an off-putting odour? How do sensors work under heat? How do you make it lightweight enough to carry and ship, but strong and robust enough not to bend or break? How do you optimise the design to keep tooling and material costs to a minimum?
Thankfully we always found a solution to every problem we encountered, testimony to Tim’s resilience and what seemed an unlimited amount of drive and determination. After securing the necessary certifications and completing some very successful trials, Tim was able to begin scaling up production. His first customers were those who’d been involved in the early trials, they hasn’t wanted to give the prototype’s back and so couldn’t wait to get some production units.
Although business are always looking for efficiency savings when it comes to energy usage, with the unprecedented rise in wholesale prices seen in 2022 there has been a huge amount of interest in the heat mats, to help bring these costs under control. BT, Brompton Bikes, Waterstones and Wayfair are just a few of the business that are using WarmTronics. A recent innovation award and interest from European businesses illustrates just how successful Tim’s launch into the market has been.
““It’s hard at the start, because you don’t really know what you’re going to get. But after listening to Pd-m talk about other products they’ve worked on, how passionately they talked about them, and how they shared the challenges in the process that they overcame, I could see their commitment. I could see their value. I knew this was right for the product.””
Work packages
