Interventional Care
Standard Test Method for Evaluation of Chemical Resistance of Thermoplastics for Non-Disposable Medical Devices
Medical Design Briefs recently published an article entitled Standard Test Method for Evaluation of Chemical Resistance of Thermoplastics for Non-Disposable Medical Devices– A Voice from Industry Collaboration Through the COVID-19 Pandemic , which discusses how PDI is working with industry leaders Eastman, Solvay, Roehm, and Zebra Technologies, to develop a test method to evaluate thermoplastics used for medical device enclosures.
Excerpt from the article:
In the Spring of 2020, under the aegis of the nonprofit organization HealthCare Surfaces Institute (HSI), engineers and scientists representing different companies across the medical device and healthcare space met to work on the conditioning, exposure, and testing of plastics used for medical device enclosures. The participants formed the Plastic Testing Standards subcommittee for the Healthcare Surfaces Institute Surface Material and Product Certification program. Eastman, Solvay, and Roehm each had participants representing the thermoplastic industry, with Zebra Technologies representing original equipment manufacturers and PDI as the chemical disinfectant manufacturer representative.
Throughout 2020, participants met once a week to discuss current testing standards and to determine whether the standards could be more clearly defined, with the intent to facilitate ease of data comparison. Initially, each company provided feedback into their conditioning, exposure, and testing practices with accompanying justification. The companies chose testing methodology based on strong material science practice, relevancy to equipment manufacturer needs, end customer use cases, and reasonable material testing throughput.