Since first learning about climate change, I have been really interested in sustainability and my impact on the environment. I have always loved spending time outdoors, and learning more about the potential dangers to the natural world around me made me want to help address this problem. Although reduction efforts on the individual-level can help, the biggest emitters are industry players. Electricity and heat production is the largest contributor to global emissions (Ritchie et al., 2024), which is directly driven by different countries’ energy mixes. Having an impact at industry-level and figuring out how to evidence the benefit of environmental reductions to policymakers is the real challenge.
Since working at Unity Insights, the number of environmental projects we have been delivering has increased substantially. Most national healthcare sectors contribute an average of 4.4% of their national carbon footprint (Health Care Without Harm, 2019; Lenzen et al., 2020), and England is no exception. In July 2022, however; the NHS became the first health system to legislate the ambition to achieve NetZero by 2045 (NHS England, 2024). More recently, ‘net zero’ was one of the key priorities identified to ‘build an NHS fit for the future’ as part of the Labour Party Manifesto (more on this later).
In looking at the contribution of healthcare to the global carbon footprint, we can recognise that there is direct link between health expenditure and healthcare-related emissions. Healthcare expenditure has been estimated to increase at a rate of 3.8% annually until 2040 (Health Care Without Harm, 2019), which means that healthcare-related emissions will only increase. This is in part due to the fact that people are living longer in developed countries, and the increasing global demand for healthcare is expected to drive up this expenditure. Without reducing environmental impacts, climate change will continue to cause more heatwaves, wildfires, floods, tropical storms and hurricanes (World Health Organisation, 2023). The recent NHS investigation report by Lord Darzi states that improving healthcare and achieving net zero are mutually reinforcing goals, and should not be viewed as a trade-off (Department of Health and Social Care, 2024). Considering that the core ambition of the healthcare industry is to protect human health, addressing the environmental impacts that may be caused by the delivery of healthcare is crucial.
Being involved in environmental projects at Unity Insights is such important and interesting work, which will become even more valuable in the foreseeable future. Unity Insights offers a range of environmental analysis, including lifecycle analysis and carbon footprint analysis. One example of our work in this field to date is the AiSentia project, which investigated the potential environmental impacts that could be achieved through using artificial intelligence to contrast-enhance soft tissues instead of requiring a contrast media injection for CT scanning (read more about this project here).
As quantifying environmental impacts is still a relatively up-and-coming field, there are numerous methodologies and carbon costing datasets, each with their own merits and shortcomings. Conducting lifecycle analysis is considered the most rigorous methodology, as impacts are considered along the entire lifecycle of a product (from “cradle to grave”), but this type of analysis can be costly and resource-intensive (Rizan & Bhutta, 2024). Other clients prefer a carbon footprint estimation to understand which aspects of their solution may be contributing the most to greenhouse gas emissions, and how this may compare to other solutions.
At Unity Insights, we help innovators to understand the sustainability of their solution from an environmental, social, and economic perspective. If you would like to find out more about how innovations in the NHS may help to achieve net zero, we are hosting a free workshop about this topic on the 11th of December. As a company, we are also committed to reducing our direct environmental impacts. We aim to achieve the NHS net zero target by 2026, as detailed in our new carbon reduction plan that outlines our coordinated approach focusing on operations, enhancing energy efficiency and promoting sustainable practices (read more here).
Working on evaluations of eco-friendly innovations that provide ways for the NHS to potentially reduce its carbon footprint has been incredibly rewarding for me, as I am contributing to reducing environmental impacts that could make a bigger difference than I ever could at an individual level. Through evidencing environmental reductions of new solutions, we can demonstrate value directly to policymakers in an industry that is moving towards net zero, one innovation at a time.
References
Department of Health and Social Care. (2024, September 25). Independent investigation of the NHS in England. GOV.UK. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/independent-investigation-of-the-nhs-in-england
Health Care Without Harm. (2019). Health care’s climate footprint report. Health Care Without Harm. https://noharm-europe.org/content/global/health-care-climate-footprint-report
Lenzen, M., Malik, A., Li, M., Fry, J., Weisz, H., Pichler, P.-P., Chaves, L. S. M., Capon, A., & Pencheon, D. (2020). The environmental footprint of health care: A global assessment. The Lancet Planetary Health, 4(7), e271–e279. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(20)30121-2
NHS England. (2024). Greener NHS » Delivering a net zero NHS. https://www.england.nhs.uk/greenernhs/a-net-zero-nhs/
Ritchie, H., Rosado, P., & Roser, M. (2024). Breakdown of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide emissions by sector. Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector
Rizan, C., & Bhutta, M. F. (2024, April). Reducing the environmental impact of medical devices adopted for use in the NHS. Brighton and Sussex Medical School. https://www.bsms.ac.uk/_pdf/about/environmental-impact-nhs-devices-report-finalv2.pdf
World Health Organisation. (2023). Climate change. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-change-and-health