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