Eric Nyquist
Keeping track of health care’s emissions
Climate change and extreme weather, like heat waves and floods, are likely to increase the pressures on the health care system. But health care itself is part of the problem. “The US health care system is responsible for nearly 9 percent of national greenhouse gases,” professor of anesthesiology Jodi Sherman noted last year in an interview with the Patient Safety Network. Figuring out where all those emissions are coming from, and how to rein them in, is a tall order.
With their YPS seed grant funding, Sherman and her colleagues have developed an open-access web platform that lets healthcare organizations track and manage their emissions, including emissions generated in the supply chain for medical technologies and goods like MRI machines and wound dressings. The goal is to make a tracking system that is as granular and adaptable as health care itself.
loading
Print
Email