Annual savings of 60,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) and around £121m on travel costs could be achieved if 3% of NHS trusts used standard conferencing technology, according to research by BT Conferencing and the Royal College of Physicians.
The findings were revealed at a recent Royal College of Physicians conference titled ‘Climate Change and Its Impact on Health,’ jointly sponsored by BT Conferencing and BT Health.
Attendees of the conference were given a survey containing 12 questions looking at how often they held meetings with people outside of their organisation and how often they had to use transport to reach these meetings.
Responses showed that many senior physicians often traveled to speak at conferences and liaise with other colleagues over new research and innovation in their sector.
However, conferencing technology could eliminate the need for this travel, whilst still allowing the user the opportunity to discuss current issues over the phone, or on a webcast.
BT Conferencing’s account director, Brian Murray, told E-Health Insider: “The health sector contributes a lot to CO2 problems, but it has the opportunity to make a difference. Not only this, but they have a duty to make a difference.
“One of the things that could be done is to travel less. Some senior doctors have larger footprints due to them travelling to conferences around the world, and the use of conferencing could eliminate this. They can use audio conferencing over the phone, which is cheaper, quicker and saves CO2, or even web conferencing over the internet.”
BT Conferencing technology was demonstrated to conference attendees through a live video link to New York to hear a presentation from Dr James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
In 2007, BT Conferencing calculated that NHS trusts saved in excess of £2.5m by using their services and avoiding travelling to and from meetings.
BT’s head of environment, Mike Hughes, added: “Increasingly our conferencing services are the preferred way to manage day-to-day meetings, enabling people to better manage their work-life balance and saves huge amounts of travelling with its associated costs and environmental impacts.”
BT Conferencing is already used by several NHS trusts and other NHS services including the NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency, the National Blood Service, together with the telephone advice services NHS Direct in England and NHS 24 in Scotland.
Murray said: “Over the last year, we have held over 40,000 conferences hosting a total of 220,000 people. Clearly conferencing technology is used in healthcare, but not as widely as other sectors. The health service does want to lead the way in tackling carbon emissions, and have a huge collective responsibility. If more trusts switch to conferencing technology, we can help achieve the savings our research has estimated.”
Dr Hugh Montgomery of the Institute for Human Health and Performance, added: “It is essential that these technologies are used to save time and money and more importantly, to save the planet and our next generation.”
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