How to improve the digital management level of medical waste through “digital technology and business data”?

Purpose The difficulty of medical waste management lies in data management. Digital technology can improve the digital management ability of medical waste, and data are the core. But what are the key data of medical waste itself and its business processes, such as generation, collection, classification, weighing, packaging, storage and transportation? How to integrate digital technology with business data to drive the digital management of hospital medical waste? These are the main research purposes. Design/methodology/approach Business Process Reengineering and Data-Driven Decision-Making are the theoretical method bases. The business process of medical waste recycling and classification was restructured and divided into four business links. The attribute characteristics of medical waste and the key data indicators of each business link were determined. Meanwhile, the composition of business data flow is analyzed, and how to deeply integrate Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), sensors and other digital technologies with data flow to optimize business process is discussed. Findings The improvement of the digital management level of medical waste, on the one hand, requires the use of RFID, sensors and other digital technologies to reconstruct business processes to achieve the automation and intelligence of recycling and classification. On the other hand, the key business data types and index characteristics need to be refined to form data sets and transform them into data assets to provide support for medical waste management decisions. Originality/value This study constructed a dual-driven mode of “Digital technology and Business data”, which provided technical application scenarios and theoretical methods for digital management of medical waste.