Medical device industry: overview on quality and sustainability

Purpose – The article aims to evaluate the state of the art of the scientific research on the investigation of quality and sustainability of medical devices to identify trends and main research topics.
Design/methodology/approach– In the first phase, a bibliometric analysis of the literature was performed following the steps proposed by Donthu et al. (2021). 927 papers were included. Then, the systematic literature review analysis was applied adopting a systematic quantitative approach(Pickering & Byrne, 2014; Pickering et al., 2015) and a final number of 20 articles were admitted.
Findings – Through the bibliometric analysis the authors investigated the state of the art of the literature on quality and sustainability of medical devices. The number of citations per year are identified and the journals, countries, and institutions that most frequently published papers on the phenomenon and the articles with the highest number of citations are shown. Moreover, five clusters were identified that correspond to the main themes of interest for the research community. Startingfrom the previous phase, the systematic literature analysis investigates the articles focused on the medical device supply chain showing that these papers can be further classified into three main groupsa and identifying the trajectories for future research.
Originality/value – By depicting the state of the art of the literature on the sustainability and quality of medical devices and their supply chain, the authors point out that this market niche should be further investigated mainly with empirical studies to develop sustainable practices that can guarantee patients’ safety and quality of life.

medical device, quality, sustainability, healthcare