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