Rethinking the impact of digital health to lower our carbon footprint (Inspired by COP30)

As leaders meet at COP30 to turn climate plans into action, health care has a clear, near-term win: help patients travel less without compromising care. Think about it -  by providing patients with safe, effective alternatives to visiting their GP or hospital, digital pathways could take thousands of car journeys off the road. 

To this end, I wanted to pull something together that looks at how suppliers can leverage this new lens on digital health to showcase value to health systems, at a time when Net Zero targets are front and centre. 

The synopsis is simple: if we’re reducing patients reliance on their health services through digital, and evidencing a reduction in GP attendances for example, then we’re reducing their need to travel to those avoided appointments!

Why patient travel matters 

Healthcare is a big emitter - about 4.4% of global emissions - so even modest changes at scale move the needle.

"If the global health care sector were a country, it would be the fifth-largest greenhouse gas emitter on the planet."
Health care’s climate footprint: How the health sector contributes to the global climate crisis and opportunities for action

In England, NHS-related road travel (patients, visitors, staff, suppliers) accounts for ~3.5% of all miles driven, and travel & transport make up ~14% of the NHS carbon footprint, including ~5% from patient travel alone.

Translation: every outpatient journey you can safely remove is climate action. 

The digital levers that cut journeys 

• Virtual consultations (video/telephone). During the pandemic, we saw the potential first-hand - large programmes showed tens of millions of miles avoided, with obvious time and cost savings for patients.

• Patient-initiated follow-up (PIFU). Moving from routine, time-based reviews to patient-led triggers reduces unnecessary visits while keeping people safe. The NHS now provides updated guidance to scale PIFU using the NHS App.

• Advice & Guidance (A&G) and digital triage. More queries resolved virtually = fewer hospital trips for both new and follow-up care. (The BMJ has explicitly called out virtual appointments as a core carbon-reduction opportunity.)

• Smart communications. Shifting to the NHS App improves attendance, reduces repeat trips, and trims paper/postal emissions.

Quick carbon maths (so you can show impact) 

There are ways to calculate the savings so that you can demonstrate the potential impact of your digital product on carbon emissions.  

1. Count avoided trips (e.g., video visits, PIFU deferrals, A&G resolutions).
2. Multiply by average round-trip distance for your service area.
3. Apply DEFRA 2024 emission factors for car travel (choose the vehicle/fuel mix relevant to your population).

Prefer a template? The Sustainable Healthcare Coalition publishes a step-by-step travel emissions calculator for remote consultations.

Pro tip for bids: present avoided miles, tCO₂e saved, patient hours saved, and £ travel costs saved. It’s hard for boards to ignore. 

What can digital health supplier's do to support this shift 

Make “travel avoided” a first-class metric. Add an emissions panel to your dashboards (visits shifted virtual, PIFU conversions, avoided re-books). Tie the totals to DEFRA factors so buyers can lift the chart into Green Plans.

Productise PIFU. Package clinically-checked symptom checkers, questionnaires, and escalation rules that let services switch from routine reviews to patient-led follow-up safely.

Close the loop on virtual clinics. Build pre-visit triage, in-visit notes, e-prescribing, and post-visit tasks so virtual isn’t a dead-end that triggers an extra in-person trip. 

Integrate the comms. Use NHS App and the new NHS Notify for reminders, prep, and results so people don’t travel “just to check.”

Publish a travel baseline and target with each deployment (e.g., “20% of OPFU virtual by month 6”), then report monthly. Commissioners need this for their Net Zero plans.

Assure what matters. Buyers will ask: is it safe, private, effective - and inclusive? Use structured assurance (e.g., ORCHA Assured) to validate clinical risk, data protection, accessibility and claims, so sustainability gains never trade off against safety. 

Keep the guardrails on 

• Equity: always offer phone and in-person fallbacks; measure digital exclusion and design mitigations. 

• Clinical safety: PIFU and remote reviews need clear red-flag pathways and monitoring. (That’s exactly what the new NHS PIFU guidance emphasises.)

• Evidence: not every appointment should be virtual. Use audit loops to confirm which pathways travel well and which don’t.
  

Why this lands now

COP30 is all about turning pledges into delivery. Health systems can’t build new hospitals overnight, but we can move thousands of follow-ups, queries, and admin visits online, today, and prove the carbon saved - while freeing capacity and improving experience. That’s a win for patients, budgets, and the planet.