A Global Collaboration Forum for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)
About the Collaboration
To address the numerous challenges facing PPE and accelerate standards development, the community needs a global collaboration forum that unifies PPE standardization efforts by leveraging the collective capabilities of the PPE industry. At its core, the forum is a collaborative agreement-such as a memorandum of understanding-among various SDOs and other key stakeholders to identify and fill critical needs. The goal is to establish a common, shared workspace, enabled by and offering digital tools to facilitate collaborative activities and interorganizational communication. The forum could also include:
Formation of new technical groups
Education and training opportunities
Certification and qualification activities
STANDARDS NEEDS
The workshop identified the need for new and modified standards across several categories of infection control PPE. These standards address high priority gaps that ASTM and other standards developing organizations (SDOs) can pursue to support PPE quality and availability.
Respirators and face masks
Protective clothing and face shields
Reprocessing and reuse of PPE
Conformity assessment
Modeling and Additive Manufacturing
CHALLENGES FACING PPE QUALITY AND AVAILABILITY
Lack of standardization, qualification, and certification
Reuse of single-use PPE
New environments and uses
CHALLENGES FACING STANDARDS DEVELOPMENT
Lack of data
Coordination of stakeholders
Dissemination of standards
Timeframe for standards development
Contact
Interested in joining this collaboration forum? Email ppe-info@astm.org to be added to the forum list.
Email
ppe-info@astm.org