The following is a guest article by Melissa Powell, COO at Genesis HealthCare.
Healthcare’s future is smart and sustainable, led by tech-driven solutions and human ingenuity. One great success story of sustainable healthcare that combines those forces begins with a nurse who sews.
Tami Ochs, an RN at New Jersey’s Overlook Medical Center, helped the facility repurpose 15,000 pounds of surgical blue wrap that was being discarded annually. She began sewing shopping bags from the non-biodegradable material used to cover sterile equipment, a project that blossomed into a goal to replace 100,000 plastic bags patients use every year. Further, Overlook is finding ways to repurpose blue wrap into ponchos and sleeping bags for people without housing.
Overlook provides a low-tech example of a popular tech term known as “circular healthcare,” one method we’ll use to build more sustainable healthcare systems. We’re uncovering more ways that tech will transform healthcare by improving patient outcomes, lowering costs, and reducing the amount of carbon the industry emits.
Healthcare is responsible for about 4.4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and emissions in U.S. healthcare rose 6 percent from 2010-18. Healthcare facilities use nearly 10 percent of U.S. energy in commercial buildings and are responsible for 8.5 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists consider anesthesia to be a “carbon hotspot.”
But we can reduce these emissions while providing better care. Last year 50 countries, including the U.S., pledged to develop “climate-resistant and low-carbon health systems” at the U.N. Climate Change Conference. And according to Phillips, 24 percent of U.S. healthcare leaders have prioritized sustainability. That number was 4 percent in 2021.
Tech inspires these pledges through circular health-care initiatives, telehealth, smart hospitals, AI, and so much more. Here are just a few ways tech will encourage sustainable healthcare.
Circular Healthcare
Healthcare Without Harm has generated a global road map for decarbonizing healthcare that features seven high-impact actions. Circular healthcare and sustainable waste management are among them.
Circular healthcare encourages us to reuse, recycle, and refurbish materials and equipment to extend their lifespan, reduce waste, and cut emissions. For instance, Boston Medical Center generates much of its electricity through a cogeneration power plant that traps and reuses excess heat, doubling the efficiency rate of a normal plant.
Healthcare providers are refurbishing or trading in equipment such as MRI machines, patient monitors, and ventilators; adopting digital solutions for record-keeping; and turning to alternative business models. Healthcare as a service represents a new model that allows providers to spend less on equipment by purchasing “subscriptions” to their use. Providers can scale their care, lower operational costs, and reduce their carbon emissions.
Circular healthcare also will play a central role in waste management and disposal, a key sustainability challenge. Hospitals produce more than 29 pounds of waste per bed per day, which requires efficient sorting, composting, and recycling processes. Most of that waste is low-risk, according to Healthcare Without Harm Europe, requiring creative solutions — such as Overlook Medical Center’s blue-wrap process.
To address the 15-25 percent of infectious medical waste, providers can investigate treatment technologies beyond incineration. Options such as autoclaving, microwaving, and frictional heat treatment have lower capital and operating costs and less environmental impact, according to the World Health Organization.
Telehealth
Doctors and providers necessarily shifted to virtual appointments during the COVID-19 pandemic but have found continuing utility in them. One benefit: less environmental impact.
Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center conducted more than 340,000 telehealth visits from March 2020-February 2021. The center found that the appointments saved more than 650,000 gallons of gas and an estimated 5,000 metric tons of carbon emissions. Ohio State called this impact “astonishing.”
According to the American Medical Association, a large medical provider connected an increase in telehealth visits to a decrease in greenhouse-gas emissions equivalent to that of 1,200 homes. In addition, a U.K. National Health Service study monitored epilepsy clinics that replaced in-patient visits with teleclinics during the pandemic’s height. The study found that the visits reduced travel by 224,000 km, “representing a significant net reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.”
Researchers must continue to study telehealth’s long-term effects on greenhouse-gas emissions, but the initial results are promising.
Smart Hospitals
According to Cisco, programmable LED lighting can improve patient and clinician experiences, lower costs, and reduce energy waste by 3-6 percent. That’s just one component of the new smart hospitals we’re building to evolve care.
Smart hospitals reinterpret healthcare by distributing services across multiple digitally connected entities. Hospitals will continue to offer acute care, while clinics, independent facilities, ambulatory centers, rehab and nursing facilities, and even patient homes will contribute to overall well-being.
These separate facilities will use blockchain and cloud technology to collect and distribute patient records seamlessly, allowing services to be more portable. Hospitals also will automate processes like laundry and food delivery, which can help reduce waste and resource use.
Cisco suggests that a low-voltage supply can power these connected systems, resulting in energy savings as high as 45 percent. That’s just one potential benefit of smart hospitals, which also can improve health outcomes and empower patients with more information.
AI
How comfortable are we turning over medical diagnoses to artificial intelligence and machine learning? We might ease discomfort by knowing that AI can help detect cancer earlier, provide more accurate mammograms, and monitor heart disease. Further, AI minimizes healthcare waste and inefficiency and potentially reduces its carbon footprint.
A recent study published in Nature found that AI systems have the potential to address healthcare disparities, improve outcomes, and cut greenhouse gas emissions. Using diabetic eye exams as its base, the study found an 80-percent reduction in emissions if patients accessed their initial diabetic eye exam using autonomous AI rather than in-person appointments.
Importantly, the study also concluded that AI’s capacity to lower carbon emissions could compensate for the increased emissions associated with it. That’s vital regarding a technology the World Economic Forum said shouldn’t be underestimated or overemphasized.
As Healthcare Without Harm advised, the climate crisis is a health crisis, requiring an industry to reinvent its processes without compromising its mission. Tech is essential to solving healthcare’s carbon problem. Digital solutions can help us become better stewards of our patients and our environment.
