Decarbonising healthcare: an important contribution!

Far away from greenwashing....how to decarbonise healthcare?

Prof. Ole Norheim and colleagues have long invested in researching how to limit the pollution generated by healthcare assets. In an article published recently by the BMJ and titled "Priority setting and net zero healthcare: how much health can a tonne of carbon buy?", Ole scopes the challenges faced by healthcare systems looking at limiting their carbon footprint.

Based on the Paris Agreement legally binding rules (as international agreements and Treaties once ratified are enforced in domestic law), the research focuses on the increasingly stringent legal norms that strive to limit the CO2 emissions of public building. In fact at Decide, the Capital Investment in Health working group integrated in its capital project decision process the need to abide by (and anticipate the evolution of) energy performance and CO2 reduction norms that apply across infrastructure.

The article also underlines the need to enshrine decarbonising in the priority setting process and looks at sources of carbon emissions amongst care types that could affect the level of CO2 emissions.

This work is extremely useful and complements cutting-edge research and findings of Decide's board member HOPE (the European Hospital and Healthcare Federation) which look at comprehensive pollution types including but not limited to CO2.

Whether  supply chain pollution -including transportation-, use of Air Conditioning for patients' safety but also dictated by equipments' biomedical maintenance needs, or even food waste....pollution is the next frontier in infrastructure management!

Interested in reading the BMJ article? Click here!