This study explores the environmental sustainability of digital health devices, specifically smart pillboxes, which are designed to help patients manage their medication, improve their health, and reduce medication non-adherence. The use of such devices has increased electronic and plastic waste and has resulted in a higher demand for critical raw materials, raising questions about their potential environmental impacts. The Digital Health in Circular Economy (DiCE) project aims to address these issues by examining the environmental sustainability of digital health devices and providing solutions to reduce their impact on the environment. This research uses Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Disassembly Map, Recovery Assessment, and Circular Product Readiness methods to assess the environmental impact of smart pillboxes at both product and functional levels. The study examines the potential environmental impact of the product's materials, production, use, and end-of-life disposal. The research suggests improvements to increase the product's environmental sustainability, such as the use of screws instead of snap fits to attach the sub-assemblies, fixating the battery in a designated spot to prevent detaching, and promoting environmentally desirable habits, such as prolonging battery life and guiding end-of-life recovery of the product. The study concludes that there is potential for further improvement to increase the product's environmental sustainability, which could lead to an improved overall health. While the current findings do not lead to absolute conclusions, this research provides a basis for comparing the environmental impact (in DALY) and benefits of digital health devices (in QALY).

In order to live more sustainably on this planet, the world’s population needs to transform the current take-make dispose society towards a society with more maintainable consumption patterns and more sustainable business models. A way to achieve this, is a circular economy in which value is maintained within the product cycle, by sharing, repairing, reusing, refurbishing and recycling. Product-service systems, such as leasing, sharing and pay-per-use models, are presented as a way to contribute to the circular economy. Product-service systems (PSS) could potentially reduce environmental impacts, however, PSS do not automatically lead to positive environmental impacts and not all PSS are by default environmentally benign. Therefore, several authors call for quantifications of PSS’ environmental impacts, because the benefits of PSS remain inexplicit in literature and are mostly qualitatively described. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a common method to evaluate the environmental impacts over a product’s lifecycle. LCAs compare the function that products or services fulfil over their entire life cycle and over various impact categories. As such, they provide an appropriate method to assess PSS’ environmental impacts.