MedTech Sustainability by Design

Even in medical device packaging recyclability has become a requirement. Medical peel bags that still seals, peels and survives sterilization is however the challenge.

In this episode you are going to learn:

- Why PE/PA multilayer is the default bottom web, and what recyclable means here

- The requirements: top webs, sterilization, shelf life, gauge and price

- Why packaging is harder to select than a resin

- How we screened 25 suppliers in four weeks with an AI-assisted workflow

- What is on the market: mono-material, bio-based, ISCC PLUS and recycled content

- The recommendation, the trade-offs and what we excluded

- Why medtech does not have a free pass on the PPWR

Want the requirements checklist from this case study? Connect with Lucas Pianegonda on LinkedIn and send him a DM asking for the checklist.

ABOUT THE PODCAST: MedTech Sustainability by Design: how medtech companies build more sustainable devices, one material decision at a time.

Book a free consultation: https://calendly.com/lucas-pianegonda-gradical/discovery-call-gradical

Gradical: https://www.gradical.ch

If you are a Medtech company struggling to make your devices more sustainable, let’s talk—BOOK A CALL HERE.

You can also check our Youtube Channel with lots of free trainings and resources here: Lucas R. Pianegonda - YouTube

Website: www.gradical.ch

Want to get PVC out of your tubing without losing the handling, the bonding or your margin? This episode walks through a real PVC-free tubing case study from start to finish.

In this episode you are going to learn:

- Why PVC has stayed in drainage sets, feeding tubes and IV tubing

- Why going PVC-free and DEHP-free pays off: Nordic tenders and fewer biocompatibility headaches

- The drop-in requirements: kink radius, Shore hardness, transparency, bonding and sterilization

- How we run the plastic selection

- The four candidates and how they fare in the comparison

- When food grade is good enough, and why comparing old non-medical PVC to a medical-grade alternative is unfair

Want the requirements checklist from this episode? Connect with Lucas Pianegonda on LinkedIn and send him a DM asking for the checklist.

ABOUT THE PODCAST

MedTech Sustainability by Design: how medtech companies build more sustainable devices, one material decision at a time.

Book a free consultation: https://calendly.com/lucas-pianegonda-gradical/discovery-call-gradical

Gradical: https://www.gradical.ch

If you are a Medtech company struggling to make your devices more sustainable, let’s talk—BOOK A CALL HERE.

You can also check our Youtube Channel with lots of free trainings and resources here: Lucas R. Pianegonda - YouTube

Website: www.gradical.ch

How do you get a medical device to market faster? Dr. Stuart Grant has over 25 years of experience in medtech, a PhD in biomedical engineering and multiple patents, and today he helps startups get to market approval.

In this episode you are going to learn:

- Why product development is a decision-making process, and what slow decisions cost

- Stuart's trick to stop scope creep

- How to state your unmet clinical need and intended purpose

- Why "do it as early as possible" is bad advice for startups

- How to observe clinicians, and when you have interviewed enough users

- How to turn user needs into design requirements

- Why design requirements are never frozen

- Why compliance and business requirements belong in separate lists

CONNECT WITH DR. STUART GRANT: [Stuart's LinkedIn URL] | [Company website]

ABOUT THE PODCAST: MedTech Sustainability by Design: how medtech companies build more sustainable devices, one material decision at a time.

Book a free consultation: https://calendly.com/lucas-pianegonda-gradical/discovery-call-gradical

Gradical: https://www.gradical.ch

Do you enjoy this podcast? Then subscribe, rate it on your platform, and join the discussion on LinkedIn! Your feedback and comments help us improve the podcast and bring you relevant topics. Let’s form a better world with plastics!

If you are a Medtech company struggling to make your devices more sustainable, let’s talk—BOOK A CALL HERE.

You can also check our Youtube Channel with lots of free trainings and resources here: Lucas R. Pianegonda - YouTube

Website: www.gradical.ch

Want a lower-carbon pipette tip without touching your mold, your process or your validation? This episode walks through a real conductive pipette tip case study from start to finish.

In this episode you are going to learn:

- Why conductive pipette tips are so hard to change

- The brief: lower CO2, same performance, minimal price premium, same mold

- How we run the plastic selection

- The shortlist and which candidate came out on top

- Why our first AI run got it wrong

- What to align with your suppliers, molders and CMOs before you switch

Want the plastic requirements checklist from this episode? Connect with Lucas Pianegonda on LinkedIn and send him a DM asking for the checklist.

ABOUT THE PODCAST

MedTech Sustainability by Design: how medtech companies build more sustainable devices, one material decision at a time.

Book a free consultation: https://calendly.com/lucas-pianegonda-gradical/discovery-call-gradical

Gradical: https://www.gradical.ch

If you are a Medtech company struggling to make your devices more sustainable, let’s talk—BOOK A CALL HERE.

You can also check our Youtube Channel with lots of free trainings and resources here: Lucas R. Pianegonda - YouTube

Website: www.gradical.ch

Want to use AI for medtech plastic selection without getting wrong answers fast? This is our six-month journey to a fully automated AI workflow, including every mistake we made along the way.

In this episode you are going to learn:

- Why "just ask AI" fails, and what you need before you automate anything

- The three medtech defaults that keep bad materials in devices

- What AI is brilliant at today

- How we got to a database with 30k+ grades

- How we cut quote requests by modelling prices

- How AI compares to a human expert, and where it beat me

Want our GradeMatch skill for your own system? It includes the questionnaire, the process and the value analysis. Book a free call below and Lucas will help you set it up.

ABOUT THE PODCAST

MedTech Sustainability by Design: how medtech companies build more sustainable devices, one material decision at a time.

Book a free consultation: https://calendly.com/lucas-pianegonda-gradical/discovery-call-gradical

Gradical: https://www.gradical.ch

If you are a Medtech company struggling to make your devices more sustainable, let’s talk—BOOK A CALL HERE.

You can also check our Youtube Channel with lots of free trainings and resources here: Lucas R. Pianegonda - YouTube

Website: www.gradical.ch

Can one product be a drug and a medical device at the same time? Subhi Saadeh, founder of Let's Combinate and host of the Let's Combinate podcast, has spent his career at that line, from IV bags at Baxter to device quality on the mRNA flu vaccine at Pfizer.

In this episode:

- The three types of combination products: integral, co-packaged and cross-labeled

- Why pharma and device teams use the same words and mean different things

- What human factors studies show about real users

- Why patients prefer single-use pens, and what that means for sustainability

- Why drugs and devices define quality differently, and why that is fine

CONNECT WITH SUBHI SAADEH: https://www.linkedin.com/in/subhi-saadeh-1169aa21/ | Let's Combinate: https://www.letscombinate.com

ABOUT THE PODCAST: MedTech Sustainability by Design is the show for people choosing better plastics in medical technology.

Book a free consultation: https://calendly.com/lucas-pianegonda-gradical/discovery-call-gradical

Gradical: https://www.gradical.ch

Do you enjoy this podcast? Then subscribe, rate it on your platform, and join the discussion on LinkedIn! Your feedback and comments help us improve the podcast and bring you relevant topics. Let’s form a better world with plastics!

If you are a Medtech company struggling to make your devices more sustainable, let’s talk—BOOK A CALL HERE.

You can also check our Youtube Channel with lots of free trainings and resources here: Lucas R. Pianegonda - YouTube

Website: www.gradical.ch

A special episode hosted by Swiss Medtech, with Barbara Mettler asking the questions. Prof. Dr. Martin Scheringer from ETH Zurich, toxicologist Arne Jaksch and Lucas Pianegonda work through what medtech companies should actually do about PFAS this year.

In this episode:

- Where PFAS sit beyond the product: process water, piping, cooling and cutting fluids, packaging, processing aids

- Why your supply chain will be interrupted before any regulatory grace period ends, and what to do about it now

- How to find PFAS in your own company without burying your suppliers in questionnaires

- Why replacing a PFAS in an existing product takes about three years, and why new development is the place to act

- Essential use and non-essential use, and why what is essential today may not be essential next year

This episode was co-hosted by Swiss Medtech.

CONNECT: Swiss Medtech https://www.swiss-medtech.ch | Barbara Mettler https://www.linkedin.com/in/barbara-mettler-a5705722/ | Martin Scheringer, ETH Zurich | Arne Jaksch, Jaksch LifeScience Consulting https://www.jlsc.ch

ABOUT THE PODCAST: MedTech Sustainability by Design is the show for people choosing better plastics in medical technology. Book a free consultation: https://calendly.com/lucas-pianegonda-gradical/discovery-call-gradical . Gradical: https://www.gradical.ch

Do you enjoy this podcast? Then subscribe, rate it on your platform, and join the discussion on LinkedIn! Your feedback and comments help us improve the podcast and bring you relevant topics. Let’s form a better world with plastics!

If you are a Medtech company struggling to make your devices more sustainable, let’s talk—BOOK A CALL HERE.

You can also check our Youtube Channel with lots of free trainings and resources here: Lucas R. Pianegonda - YouTube

Website: www.gradical.ch

From September 2026, the EU stops accepting green claims that nobody has verified. Self-certified labels are banned. Fines run up to 4% of annual revenue.

I talked to James Connelly, CEO of My Green Lab, the non-profit behind the ACT Ecolabel, the first third-party verified eco-label for laboratory products. Over 5,300 labs in 62 countries have engaged with My Green Lab certification, including 42 of the 50 largest biotech and pharma companies.

In this episode:

- How the ACT 2.0 label's 100-point score actually works, and why there is no on-site audit

- What the Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition Directive bans, and what "verifiable" means for your own claims

- The line between a defensible CO2 claim and one that gets you in regulatory trouble

- Why medical devices don't have an ACT-style label yet, and what would have to change first

CONNECT WITH JAMES CONNELLY: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-connelly-55909024/

ABOUT THE PODCAST: MedTech Sustainability by Design is the show for people choosing better plastics in medical technology.

Book a free consultation: https://calendly.com/lucas-pianegonda-gradical/discovery-call-gradical

Gradical: https://www.gradical.ch

Do you enjoy this podcast? Then subscribe, rate it on your platform, and join the discussion on LinkedIn! Your feedback and comments help us improve the podcast and bring you relevant topics. Let’s form a better world with plastics!

If you are a Medtech company struggling to make your devices more sustainable, let’s talk—BOOK A CALL HERE.

You can also check our Youtube Channel with lots of free trainings and resources here: Lucas R. Pianegonda - YouTube

Website: www.gradical.ch

European hospitals are already scoring sustainability in tenders. Joachim Almdal from Care Pathway Consulting explains why the device is only 10 to 15% of the emissions across a care pathway, and why that changes what you optimise and who you have to convince.

In this episode:

- What a care pathway is, and why looking at the device alone moves the problem around instead of solving it

- Why European healthcare providers cannot hit their 2035 and 2045 targets without pushing requirements onto suppliers

- Where you can charge a green premium, where sustainability is only a tiebreaker, and why segmentation decides which one you are in

- Why your salespeople will dodge the sustainability question unless you train them, and what that costs you in tenders

CONNECT WITH JOACHIM: LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/joachim-espeland-almdal-017a6973/ | Care Pathway Consulting https://carepathwayconsulting.com | Sustainable Healthcare Podcast, on Spotify and Apple

ABOUT THE PODCAST: MedTech Sustainability by Design is the show for people choosing better plastics in medical technology. Book a free consultation: https://calendly.com/lucas-pianegonda-gradical/discovery-call-gradical . Gradical: https://www.gradical.ch

Do you enjoy this podcast? Then subscribe, rate it on your platform, and join the discussion on LinkedIn! Your feedback and comments help us improve the podcast and bring you relevant topics. Let’s form a better world with plastics!

If you are a Medtech company struggling to make your devices more sustainable, let’s talk—BOOK A CALL HERE.

You can also check our Youtube Channel with lots of free trainings and resources here: Lucas R. Pianegonda - YouTube

Website: www.gradical.ch

Why are most catheters still glued and heat-shrunk together by hand? Simone Maccagnan from Gimac International makes the case for microextrusion: single continuous parts, controlled molecular weight and crystallinity, and dynamic extrusion that changes stiffness along one tube.

In this episode:

- How microextrusion replaces multi-part catheter assemblies, and why that matters for validation, scrap and patient safety

- What dynamic extrusion is, and where the physics gets hard

- How inline measurement cuts revalidation and total cost

- An honest take on fluoropolymers, PFAS and where automation helps

This episode was sponsored by Gimac.

GET IN TOUCH WITH GIMAC: https://www.gimac.com

ABOUT THE PODCAST: MedTech Sustainability by Design is the show for people choosing better plastics in medical technology. Book a free consultation: https://calendly.com/lucas-pianegonda-gradical/discovery-call-gradical . Gradical: https://www.gradical.ch

Do you enjoy this podcast? Then subscribe, rate it on your platform, and join the discussion on LinkedIn! Your feedback and comments help us improve the podcast and bring you relevant topics. Let’s form a better world with plastics!

If you are a Medtech company struggling to make your devices more sustainable, let’s talk—BOOK A CALL HERE.

You can also check our Youtube Channel with lots of free trainings and resources here: Lucas R. Pianegonda - YouTube

Website: www.gradical.ch