Global wearable shipments hit 600 million units in 2025 and could pass 2 billion by 2050, according to industry data cited in a four-year European study that urges health-care manufacturers, providers, regulators and patients to redesign medical electronics before the bulk of them are incinerated.

The report from the Digital Health in the Circular Economy (DiCE) project draws on work from 414 participants across 20 organizations in nine European countries, with data collected between October 2022 and September 2026. The consortium now wants its findings treated as an operational blueprint rather than another framework document.

What does the report actually propose?

DiCE packages the work into five recommendations aimed at pulling more critical raw materials back into use:

• Design medical devices so they can be repaired, refurbished or remanufactured
• Introduce digital product passports and bills of materials to improve recovery
• Expand collection and return systems through pharmacies and other facilities
• Align device regulations with sustainable product design so environmental targets complement patient safety
• Develop circularity indicators that reward lifetime extension, reuse and repair rather than recycling alone

Alongside the recommendations, DiCE built a five-step Circular Design Guide with clinicians, engineers and end users. The document walks product teams through integrating circular thinking into existing systems, from making devices cleanable to enabling disassembly for component retrieval.

How big is the medical e-scrap problem?

The pressure comes from tens of millions of new diabetes sensors, blood pressure monitors, surgical instruments and similar products entering the European market each year, with refresh cycles of one to three years. Contamination and patient privacy concerns funnel a large share of those devices into health-care waste streams, where incineration destroys reusable components and embedded minerals.

"The rapid growth of this market is creating a largely overlooked problem: a fast-growing stream of electronic waste," said Pascal Leroy, director general of the Belgium-based Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Forum. "DiCE has shown how to mitigate that problem and recover increasingly precious and strategically critical raw materials."

Where do the biggest gains sit?

Lifecycle assessments compiled by DiCE point to system-level redesign rather than part-level tweaks. Circuit boards, batteries and displays still carry most of the material weight, but the project found health-care workflow changes can outweigh hardware changes in climate terms. Examples include:

• Reusable electrocardiogram (ECG) leads cut environmental impacts by at least 81% versus disposable versions, with sterilization as the main intervention
• Electronic pharmaceutical labels reduced drug-related climate impact by about 27% by keeping medicine in active use when label information changed
• Powered surgical staplers enabled shorter procedures and hospital stays, trimming surgery-related climate impact by 12%

The study also reported that more than 60% of participants were willing to return devices when convenient collection points sat within reach.

What about the United States?

No formal health-care e-scrap tracking exists in the US. Health Care Without Harm estimates that US hospitals generate more than 5 million tons of waste per year, while separate estimates put the country's single-use health-care plastics at 2.1 million metric tons annually. DiCE's European blueprint stops at the border, but the underlying market trajectory is global: wearable refresh cycles remain short, and collection infrastructure lags device deployment.

What happens next?

DiCE lead author Tamara Hoveling, of TU Delft, framed the design guide as the project's core deliverable. "The healthcare sector increasingly depends on digital technologies, yet many devices are designed to be used and discarded," she said. "Delivered by the DiCE project is the first integrated blueprint for circular designing of medical devices."

The next milestone to track is whether the five-step design guide, the digital product passport proposal, and the recommendation to align device regulations with sustainability criteria land in the European Commission's ongoing ecodesign for sustainable products rulemaking, and whether member-state waste authorities begin publishing medical e-scrap tonnage alongside the existing WEEE reporting streams that already track consumer electronics.