Wearable healthcare devices—such as glucose monitors, ultrasound patches and blood-pressure monitors—can be invaluable for keeping patients safe.
A new study from the University of Chicago and Cornell University found that demand for such healthcare electronics could approach 2 billion units per year by 2050. But unless measures are taken to reduce the environmental impact, these devices could cumulatively generate more than a million tons of electronic waste and 100 million tons of carbon dioxide by 2050.
Surprisingly, the plastics weren’t the biggest problem. Instead, the study found, a device’s printed circuit board is by far the largest contributor to its carbon footprint—accounting for 70% of the total, partially due to the intensive mining and manufacturing required for its integrated circuits.
The research, published Jan. 1 in Nature, offers two potential avenues for reducing the environmental impacts of these wearables.
"Our hope is that this framework will guide the responsible development of next-generation wearables."
Chuanwang Yang, postdoctoral researcher at UChicago and first author of the study
As electronics have gotten smaller and more flexible, they’ve been incorporated into more uses in the field of healthcare. The ability to continuously track a patient’s blood pressure, glucose or heartbeats can help doctors and caregivers keep them stable and avert crises.
But most of these devices are designed to be disposable—even more so than consumer electronics, in many cases, since longer-term use can pose the risk of performance degradation or infection.
The laboratory of Bozhi Tian, professor of chemistry at UChicago, found little research had been done on this ballooning market and its potential environmental impact. They joined forces with the Cornell University Prof. Fengqi You’s group to tackle this challenge.
“As this transformative field accelerates, society still lacks a clear understanding of its full environmental implications,” said Yang.
First, the team modeled global use of these devices. Extrapolating from current trends, by 2050, the demand for healthcare electronics worldwide could be 42 times higher than today, accounting for about 2 billion units annually.
Next, the team developed a framework for measuring the environmental footprint of these devices.
A comprehensive analysis is important but difficult, because it must pull together many threads. Tian’s team incorporated every part of a device’s “life cycle”: from the impacts of the mining required for ingredients, to the energy used in manufacturing the devices, all the way to the waste created after disposal. They judged carbon footprint, toxicity of the materials and electronic waste.
"Even though each chip only needs a small amount of the metal mining consumes a lot of energy and produces a lot of waste."
Chuanwang Yang, postdoctoral researcher at UChicago and first author of the study
The analysis found that the printed circuit board—the “brain” controlling the device’s electronics—dominated the device’s environmental impact by a wide margin.
When people discuss sustainability in devices, Tian said, the conversation is usually about plastics, or perhaps the sensors. But that only turns out to account for a small fraction of the total. For example, even if all the plastic in the devices were to be replaced with biodegradable versions, the impact only lessons by 3%.
The integrated circuit, meanwhile, requires precious metals like gold. Even though each chip only needs a small amount of the metal, mining consumes a lot of energy and produces a lot of waste.
The team identified two major potential solutions to lower the devices’ carbon footprint.
The first is for chemists and engineers to develop new chips that can use more easily obtainable minerals, such as copper or aluminum, instead of rarer minerals like gold.
Copper and aluminum are less stable than gold, which is why they haven’t been used in chips. But there may be ways to design around this problem.
“A lot of people assumed you would have to sacrifice performance if you use more reactive metals, but our analysis suggests it should be OK if you provide extra protection for the circuitry,” said Tian.
The second major solution is to design the devices to be modular.
"More than 70% of the carbon footprint of a device comes from the circuit boards."
Prof. Bozhi Tian, professor of chemistry at UChicago
Most healthcare devices need to be changed periodically; but if the covering can be discarded and the integrated circuit kept intact, that would avoid the largest carbon culprit.
There are other pieces, too. For example, if all the devices were manufactured using solely renewable energy, the carbon footprint drops by 15%.
“Really what we see is that when we are looking for solutions to sustainability, we have to consider all components together,” said Tian.
With global tech and healthcare companies investing heavily in wearable devices, the team hopes their framework can make this type of analysis more widespread—which is key as society seeks to transition to sustainable advancement.
“Our work offers a systems engineering framework for many transformative technologies, from wearables to AI and to robotics, so that technical innovation and environmental stewardship can advance together,” said Yang.
Other UChicago co-authors on the paper were postdoctoral researchers Ji Wan and Ananth Kamath.
Citation: “Quantifying the global eco-footprint of wearable healthcare electronics.” Chuangwang et al, Nature, Jan. 1, 2026.
(Newswise/LC)
