A Challenge for Systemic Transformation towards Circular Healthcare Economy: Single-Use or Not?

Abstract

The study aims to discuss the challenge of systemic transformation of healthcare economy in the context of disinfection and sterilization (DAS) process. The database of the Web of Science (WoS) has been used to obtain data. In R environment, a variety of analyzes have been conducted through the biblioshiny. Following the descriptive findings, trend words, trend word weights and related visuals have been obtained. Multiple correspondence analysis was used to evaluate the development course of trending words by year, and the ggplot2 package has been used to visualization. An attempt has been made to draw attention to the difficulty of the systemic transformation of the healthcare economy by supporting the circular approach concepts featured in the publications with knowledge and experience from the field. The number of publications and citations in the field has shown an increasing trend. Prominent studies have been conducted in the areas of infection control, dialysis, anesthesia, and analgesia. Trend words have shown that life cycle assessment, reuse, sterilization, reprocessing, etc. concepts have a high level of centricity and concentration. Similarly, multiple correspondence analysis findings have shown that a heavy reliance has been placed on DAS processes in recent studies. The results clearly show that the systemic transformation from a linear healthcare economy to a circular one will create challenges for hospital administrations. It is therefore assessed that a hybrid approach to the continued use of disposable products instead of a purely circular approach will be beneficial to the sustainability of healthcare.