NHS England’s lead official for its NHS net zero programme has announced plans to engage with public sector organisations on its processes for choosing appropriate digital tools.
Ben Tongue spoke at the UK Authority’s Powering Digital Public Services conference, where he outlined the digital elements of efforts to decarbonise the NHS on the path to making the service the “world’s first net zero national health service”.
Greener NHS
Tongue argued that digital is now seen as an enabler for decarbonisation, notably through developments including the expansion of telehealth, the development of ‘smart’ hospitals, using the technology in asset management and circular hardware procurement – which is focused on reducing the creation of waste and negative environmental impacts.
To help with its net zero transition, NHS England has developed five main processes, including, developing the business case and benefits, digital service design, procurement and climate change risk management, and data collection – along with the relevant obligations and tooling.
The latter includes a net carbon calculator for digital tooling, a sustainable digital service design specification, guidance on compliance with the Cabinet Office public procurement policy notes and prototypes for climate change risk assessments of digital health services. Tongue said his team is currently running a baseline exercise for data collection, taking into account factors such as digital maturity assessments, procurement data and cybersecurity.
Invitation to talk on sustainability healthcare
“It’s a process-based approach, and this is a collaborative exercise in which I would invite people from the public sector to have a chat about what they are doing, or potentially using some of the stuff we are doing,” said Tounge. “We’ve taken these processes that map into obligations that apply to us and created the tooling.”
As part of the announcement, Tongue outlined design choices for reducing carbon emissions, including: ensuring that any hosting service is selected in low carbon and architected for sustainability; decommissioning old infrastructure to remove technical debt; ensuring end-user devices run on low energy and are re-used; and looking at whether interoperability helps the same hardware achieve more outcomes.
The broader net zero plan
The NHS has committed to achieving net zero for its controlled emissions, known as its ‘NHS Carbon Footprint’, by 2040. Additionally, the government service aims to achieve net zero for its indirectly influenced emissions, referred to as its ‘NHS Carbon Footprint Plus’, by 2045.
Put into standardised and relatable terms, the ‘NHS Carbon Footprint’ encompasses elements from all greenhouse gas protocol emission scopes (scope 1, 2, and 3). Whereas, the ‘NHS Carbon Footprint Plus’ grouping specifically includes remaining scope 3 emissions.
