Digital Tracking and Monitoring of Biomedical Waste

Biomedical waste (BMW) management has become a critical public health and environmental priority due to the rapid expansion of healthcare facilities, diagnostic centers, and laboratories. Improper handling, segregation, transportation, and disposal of biomedical waste can lead to severe risks including infection transmission, chemical exposure, and ecological contamination. Traditional biomedical waste monitoring systems are largely manual, fragmented, and documentation-driven, resulting in poor traceability, compliance gaps, and delayed corrective actions. With the emergence of digital technologies such as IoT sensors, barcode/RFID tagging, GPS-enabled transport, and centralised dashboards, digital tracking and monitoring systems offer a transformative solution for biomedical waste governance. This study examines the role and effectiveness of digital tracking systems in improving biomedical waste monitoring performance across healthcare facilities. The research uses a structured quantitative approach based on a dataset of 300 healthcare units, capturing variables such as waste generation volume, segregation compliance, digital tracking score, staff training hours, collection delay, incident count, and cost per kilogram. The objective is to statistically evaluate how digital tracking adoption influences operational efficiency, compliance levels, and risk reduction. Correlation and regression analyses were conducted to test the relationships between digital tracking score and key performance indicators such as segregation compliance, incident count, and collection delay. The findings show a strong positive correlation between digital tracking score and segregation compliance, and a negative correlation with incident count and collection delay. Regression results indicate that digital tracking score and staff training hours are significant predictors of higher compliance and lower incident rates. Hypothesis testing confirms that facilities with higher digital tracking adoption demonstrate statistically significant improvements in biomedical waste handling outcomes. The study concludes that digital tracking and monitoring systems substantially strengthen biomedical waste management by improving traceability, accountability, and decision support. However, challenges remain in terms of infrastructure cost, staff training, data integration, and cybersecurity. The research contributes a data-driven framework for policymakers, hospital administrators, and environmental regulators to support digital transformation in biomedical waste management systems. Future research may expand through longitudinal and cross-country comparative models.