Perspective on a risk-based roadmap towards the implementation of the safe innovation approach for industry

Abstract

The challenge in ensuring the safety of manufactured nanomaterials and products stems from the lack of knowledge among industries about the potential environment and health risks of nanotechnology based innovations and the legislations that apply to them. A lack of information and preparedness for the regulatory safety assessment of innovative nanomaterials and products often lead to their delay in market launch or complete abandoning. Safe Innovation Approach (SIA) is a proactive system that aims to minimize the gap between the pace of innovation and the pace of developing nano-specific risk governance. The use of SIA framework in product innovation value chain can ensure sustainable innovative products and rapid market launch for which relevant regulatory framework is in place through a proactive collaboration of all concerned stakeholders. Previous efforts within several European projects and other national collaborations have helped to continue developing a framework for SIA, operationalizing the required infrastructure for its implementation, and developing novel innovation and governance processes for industry and regulators respectively to practice it. In line with these developments, the present work provides a perspective of a risk-based roadmap to be integrated in the current state of the SIA framework. Recommendations to further improve certain aspects of SIA innovation process are provided in this context, and a risk-aware integrated roadmap is presented on the basis of these recommendations to assist the industry to adopt SIA as a regular industrial practice. This can sustainably improve the margin of industrial profit from manufacturing and processing of nanomaterials and products with compliant environmental and human health safety features throughout their life cycle.