Assessment of end-of-life design in solid-state lighting

Consumers in the US market and across the globe are beginning to widely adopt light emitting diode (LED) lighting products while the technology continues to undergo significant changes. While LED products are evolving to consume less energy, they are also more complex than traditional lighting products with a higher number of parts and a larger number of electronic components. Enthusiasm around the efficiency and long expected life span of LED lighting products is valid, but research to optimize product characteristics and design is needed. This study seeks to address that gap by characterizing LED lighting products’ suitability for end of life (EOL) recycling and disposal. The authors disassembled and assessed 17 different lighting products to understand how designs differ between brands and manufacture year. Products were evaluated based on six parameters to quantify the design. The analysis indicates that while the efficiency of LED products has improved dramatically in the recent past, product designers and manufacturers could incorporate design strategies to improve environmental performance of lighting products at end-of-life

Harmonizing Technological Innovation and End-of-Life Strategy in the Lighting Industry

Today’s globalized economy largely follows a linear “take-make-dispose” model, where natural resources are extracted to manufacture products that are eventually disposed of in a landfill. Growing constraints on key resources such as energy sources, water and materials coupled with the global increased demand for goods and services render this linear model unsustainable. To address these issues, companies and governments alike are attempting to develop circular processes that preserve natural resources and reduce the global waste burden. As new technology products are designed and brought to market, consideration must be given to how products will be managed throughout the life-cycle as well as their end-of-life fate. This research uses light-emitting diode (LED) lighting products as a case study to assess how technological innovation can be harmonized with end-of-life strategies to create increasingly closed-loop systems, a key step to bringing the circular economy to fruition. The work will: 1) examine current end-of-life strategies, 2) analyze how various design choices and failure modes influence a product’s options at end of life, 3) assess how economic costs and environmental impacts vary among end-of-life strategies, and 4) develop a framework to determine the optimal management and end-of-life strategy for a given lighting product. Key methods employed will include product analysis, life-cycle assessment, and cost optimization. The end goal of the research is to provide a methodology for assessing the economic and environmental implications of end-of-life strategies for a given technology product

Reliability of a Telemedicine System Designed for Rural Kenya

Objective: Access to health care in rural areas of developing nations is hindered by both the lack of physicians and the preference of many physicians to practice in urban settings. As a result, rural patients often choose not to sacrifice wages or time to visit distant health care providers. A telemedicine system, Mashavu: Networked Health Solutions, designed to increase access to preprimary health care in rural areas, was field-tested in rural Kenya. This study aims to examine the reliability of the system compared to the traditional face-to-face method of health care delivery. Method: Reliability of the telemedicine system was tested using a modified intraobserver concordance study. Community health workers operated the system in various remote locations. Patient health information including chief complaint, medical history, and vital statistics were sent via Internet to a consulting nurse. After patients completed the telemedicine consultation, they also met in-person with the same nurse. Subsequently, the nurse’s advice during the in-person session was compared with his feedback provided through the telemedicine consultation. Results: When comparing the nurse’s advice given through the telemedicine system with the advice given through more traditional face-to-face, in-person consultation, the nurse provided consistent medical feedback in 78.4% of the cases (n = 102). The nurse’s advice regarding patient action (eg, clinical referrals or no further care necessary) was the same in 89.2% of the cases (n = 91). Conclusion: The study found that this telemedicine system was able to provide patients with approximately the same quality of care and advice as if the patient had physically travelled to a clinic to see a nurse. In rural areas of developing nations where there are high logistical and economical barriers to accessing health care, this telemedicine system successfully increased the ease and lowered the cost of connecting rural patients with nurses to provide preprimary care