Real-world outcomes

Industry partner: The Royal Melbourne Hospital

Project: Eliminating Hospital Thermoplastic Waste

In Semester 1, 2019, Team AJ6 completed their 12-week project with the Royal Melbourne Hospital (RMH). The RMH prosthetics and orthotics (P&O) team fabricate hundreds of artificial limbs every year, a process which inevitably results in large amounts of expensive plastic and metal waste.

In a bid to increase sustainable practices by the institution, the student team set out to find an innovative solution to minimise the waste stream involved in the production of artificial limbs.

Through their investigation, the team realised that there are entire limbs that go unused at the end of their life. Mark Graf, head of P&O at the Royal Melbourne Hospital said, “A lot of amputees will have three maybe four limbs in their cupboards that either get thrown out or they don’t know what to do with them".

The team’s report recommended that RMH partner with the new Australian Legs4Africa branch. The Royal Melbourne Hospital acted on their CIE team’s recommendations, and a partnership was born! The RMH’s partnership with Legs4Africa means that prosthetic legs that would otherwise go to waste can be recycled and reused. The RMH CIE/CIP team delivered real value for the Royal Melbourne Hospital by offering a solution with long-term benefits, that the Hospital hadn’t previously considered.

For the Royal Melbourne Hospital’s news story on the partnership, click here.