Facing decarbonisation and further digital transformation of healthcare

Healthcare around the world is responsible for 4% of carbon dioxide emissions - this is more than the aviation industry or maritime transport. This is mainly due to the fact that most hospitals and care facilities are not designed with energy efficiency in mind, and at the same time, specialist medical equipment is constantly working everywhere and, for example, air-conditioning and cooling devices are used on a large scale.

On the other hand, a changing climate has a direct impact on the health of the population and puts additional strain on healthcare infrastructure. It is the greatest global health threat facing the world, but at the same time an opportunity to redefine the scale of environmental impact on social determinants of health.

As the impact of climate change continues to increase, healthcare leaders will need to build the resilience of their system infrastructure, supply chain and workforce to withstand the health effects of natural disasters such as floods, droughts, fires and storms, but also to cope with influx of patients with respiratory, cardiovascular and other health problems caused by climate change, believe the authors of the report "2022 Global Health Care Outlook. Are we finally seeing the long-promised transformation? ”, Prepared by the consulting company Deloitte.

The pandemic exposed existing weaknesses in public health systems, putting healthcare workers under enormous stress. It has also contributed to reimagining the future of public health, in which shared goals of prevention and community well-being are promoted and in which the traditional paradigm of care for the sick is abandoned.

As the report shows, there is a clear need to transform troubled and constrained public health systems into human-centered, inclusive and shock-resistant systems. This new vision will require new partnerships between public and private healthcare providers, new sources of funding, new actors with diverse skills and expertise, and significant steps to digitize health. The COVID-19 pandemic has ushered in a growing awareness of the need to invest in the health of the population by strengthening existing and creating new models of collaboration across professional, institutional and organizational boundaries, which is critical to improving healthcare infrastructure.

In times of global crisis, healthcare systems will require a lot of new investments, and digital technologies, from targeted applications to entire smart cities, can play a key role in their transformation. At the same time, it is important to start by using the potential of the resources already possessed, then invest in new solutions or enter into partnerships enabling further development, and finally - automate repetitive processes.

- Healthcare systems can move features such as training databases, test environments and disaster backups to the cloud. In this way, they can learn to use the possibilities of cloud solutions to transfer their core processes there over time. Striving to achieve profitability on a larger scale also means that at least some of the routine activities, such as testing electronic medical records systems, should be automatic - says Paweł Kuśmierowski, associate partner, Life Sciences & Health Care Poland at Deloitte.

The sheer need to maintain social distance has forced medical service providers to rapidly implement virtual care tools and increasingly rely on advanced technologies such as cloud solutions, 5G technology, artificial intelligence (AI), and interoperable datasets and their advanced analytics.

Digital transformation is a necessary step in preparing for the consumer-centric future of healthcare systems. It will also help to build and equip a "wallless hospital" that will combine hospital care with alternative models, including community and home care.

. The full report is available for download here .

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