Sustainable & Green Strategies

In light of the climate crisis’s imminent threat to human well-being and the profound economic consequences it carries, we, as healthcare managers, occupy a crucial position in addressing these multifaceted challenges. Our roles extend far beyond traditional healthcare administration, encompassing a vital responsibility for environmental sustainability within healthcare systems. We must allocate resources wisely, ensuring investments in eco-friendly technologies and sustainable procurement practices. Healthcare managers play an instrumental role in policy development, advocating for and implementing measures to reduce waste, increase recycling, and minimise energy consumption. Furthermore, we must actively promote and adopt environmentally conscious technologies, such as energy-efficient medical equipment and telemedicine solutions, all while prioritising education and training on sustainable practices for their staff.

Additionally, we must prepare healthcare systems to face an increased demand for services resulting from the health impacts of climate change, ensuring their resilience and adaptability. By forging partnerships, advocating for green initiatives, and engaging with communities, healthcare managers can significantly contribute to the creation of resilient, equitable, and environmentally sustainable healthcare systems that address both the current and future health impacts of climate change. In this issue, our contributors discuss Sustainable & Green Strategies, outlining how healthcare organisations can improve the efficiency and delivery of patient care while becoming more sustainable and eco-friendlier.

Simona Agger Ganassi highlights the importance of awareness, systems approach, interaction from top-down and bottom-up, and willingness and urgency to take action and tackle the climate change problem with the decarbonisation of the health sector. Cale Lawlor and co-authors discuss the challenges of decarbonisation and sustainability and how the health sector can mitigate climate change while improving public health outcomes.

Karolina Mackiewicz offers Insights on making healthcare and hospitals more sustainable and strategies to make them more efficient and capable of leveraging digital technology to pursue these goals. Joshua Dworsky-Fried and co-authors offer an overview of Canada’s interest in environmental sustainability within its healthcare system and outline the country’s initiatives to build a more climate-resilient healthcare infrastructure. Will Clark discusses the role of healthcare leaders, their responsibility to act against climate change, and how hospitals must prioritise climate-smart initiatives and integrate sustainability into their daily operations for a healthier future for both people and the planet.

Teja Kikelj Mermal describes five perspectives and solutions across Europe and Canada that highlight innovative initiatives to enhance sustainability and mitigate the environmental harm the health sector unintentionally causes. Beatriz Piñeiro Lago discusses how healthcare facilities can take the lead in transitioning to net zero and describes the climate-smart initiative implemented by the Galician Health Service. Don Sweete talks about SNOMED CT, a comprehensive, multilingual healthcare terminology developed for healthcare professionals to document individual patient care within electronic health records.

In today’s demanding and fast-paced medical environment, physicians are challenged by time constraints, information overload, and waning job satisfaction. John Nosta highlights how Assistive AI technologies offer promising solutions to the signal-to-noise conundrum in medicine. Henrique Martins and co-authors present the journey towards the European Electronic Health Record Exchange Format as a standardisation process for digital health interoperability to be a reality and to reap the benefits of digital transformation.

Inga Shugalo explores the use of business intelligence tools for data-driven decisions and insight. Patrick PT Jeurissen highlights the rise of for-profit strategies, including consolidation, segmentation, and turnaround management and how they can affect the future hospital landscape and disrupt the traditional one-size-fits-all approach.

We hope you enjoy reading this issue and welcome any feedback.