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Environmentally sustainable health care: the opportunities and challenges of life cycle assessments

Innovation including research

Published August 2025

  • Date (DD-MM-YYYY)

    07-09-2025 to 07-09-2026

    Available on-demand until 7th September 2026

  • Cost

    Free

  • Education type

    Article

  • CPD subtype

    On-demand

Description

The health-care sector is a substantial contributor to climate change. To address this global issue, more than 120 countries committed to creating environmentally sustainable health systems at the COP28 UN Climate Change Conference held in November, 2023. Sustainability is thus becoming increasingly important for clinical practice. Life cycle assessments quantify the environmental sustainability of systems, products, and processes such as medical interventions. In this Personal View, we explain the fundamental concepts and principles of the methodology in the context of health care, intended for readers new to the field. The opportunities and challenges of applying this methodology to the delivery of health care are also discussed, as sustainability will become an important consideration in clinical decision making.

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