A win-win-win over medical waste

RNZ News

09-07-2025

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If you have ever been sitting in a GP's rooms, a hospital emergency department or hospital room you have probably watched as a doctor or nurse opens a sterile packet of something, uses it once, and then bins it.
If you had that stuff at home you would probably wash it and use it again - items such as deep vein thrombosis sleeves, patient transfer mattresses and blood pressure cuffs.
You would not be the only one wondering about the waste.
Now, a Kiwi company has an answer, and is taking more than 50 types of single-use medical devices and giving them a second life.
Canterbury-based Medsalv reckons it has so far saved more than half a million devices from landfills across Australia and New Zealand, throughout more than 90 hospitals.
It collects the old devices, remanufactures them by inspecting, cleaning, testing and repackaging; and returns them.
Along the way it's saving health care providers a lot of money, and creating jobs, many of them for people with barriers to employment.
If the whole country got on board, one estimate suggests it could prevent 1700 tonnes of medical waste going to landfills a year - and generate $100 million in savings.
But Medsalv has spent years banging its head against Pharmac's doors, and has only just got onto a secondary list (non-contracted) for approved suppliers, saving hospitals having to go through a procurement process.
In the meantime the company's work has been whole heartedly embraced by Australia, where Medsalv now has a factory with support and funding from the Victoria state government.
Medsalv founder and chief executive Oliver Hunt tells The Detail the process to get in the door with Pharmac has been long and exceptionally difficult.
After years of discussions, Pharmac has put the Medsalv's remanufactured medical devices on its new comprehensive list, effective from 1 July, but it still has not made it onto its main contracted list.
"So, we are on a list, but we are not on a contracted list. So, the products that we've put through don't have a price next to them, and the next step for us is to get a contract with whoever the contracting entity becomes.
"I think it's a step in the right direction, and it's good to show people the value of the products that we're delivering, but there are more steps to happen."
Pharmac says having your hospital medical devices in the Hospital Medical Devices List ensures that Health NZ hospitals can consider your products for use in their hospital.
Health NZ hospitals can choose which devices they buy from the list without needing to run a primary procurement process.
Pharmac also told The Detail that contracts for medical devices are generally evergreen, meaning they don't have an end date. And this helps to secure the best deals, with a wide range of suppliers.
It says the latest comprehensive list brings greater transparency to what's used and funded in public hospitals.
But haematologist Dr Ruth Spearing, a supporter of Oliver Hunt and Medsalv, tells The Detail, Pharmac's model is "completely wrong".
"I look at the amount of waste that goes to the landfill, the amount of money that is wasted, it is just horrendous. And anything, any company which can reduce that wastage and reduce its expenditure should be being supported and not blocked in the way that Pharmac has consistently blocked Oliver's company. It's such a shame.
"Pharmac's model is completely wrong in so much as it deals with big international device companies and gives them very long contracts and also gives them contracts with fixed amounts so there's no ability of Health New Zealand to actually become more efficient and decrease purchases because those companies have fixed amounts that they have been contracted to sell by Pharmac to Health New Zealand.
"So, the model is completely wrong. And any way to try to break into that model has been seemingly impossible."
Hunt, a mechanical engineer, founded Medsalv while completing his master's in engineering management at the University of Canterbury. The social enterprise was his master's project.
He says the reprocessing of used single-use devices is meticulous. Every item is collected after use, then cleaned, tested, and sterilised to internationally recognised standards. If anything doesn't pass inspection, it's binned; broken apart into individual materials and recycled where possible.
Hunt says the remanufactured devices come back at a lower cost, "we provide employment for people facing barriers to employment in the process, there's less emissions, less waste... we create some quite significant benefits for the health system and for the hospitals."
He says it is about using innovation to stretch the health dollar.
Dr Ruth Spearing says New Zealand needs to be "supporting these companies, we need to be supporting innovation, and we need to be supporting people like Oliver who are making a difference. It really is a win-win-win company."
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