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HealthcareLCA
HealthcareLCA
7,000 impact values, 2,000 products and processes, 1,000 authors, 600 institutions, 300 data sources, 190 countries, 20 years
From individual pharmaceuticals to entire health systems, researchers around the world are working hard to assess the environmental impacts of different aspects of healthcare.
HealthcareLCA serves as an up-to-date repository for this work, bringing together new and existing assessments into one centralized and publicly accessible database.
In support of a rapid and evidence-based transition toward sustainable health systems, we provide open-access to all of our data and charts.
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HealthcareLCA is a collaboration between:
HealthcareLCA
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Cumulative number of data sources and products and processes
HealthcareLCA currently includes impact estimates for over 2,000 healthcare products or processes from more than 250 data sources
— Running total
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Geographical distribution of products and processes
HealthcareLCA currently includes impact estimates for products or processes in more than 190 countries. The United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and Australia are the countries with the most estimates.
— global coverage
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Scale of analysis among data sources
Healthcare's environmental impacts can be examined at different scales. Most data sources to date have focused on healthcare equipment, pharmaceuticals, and procedures.
— assessment category
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Geographical distribution of author institutions
HealthcareLCA currently includes research from more than 500 author institutions, with most based in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia.
— global coverage
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Accumulation of data sources by country income category
The vast majority of impact assessments within healthcare have been undertaken in countries considered to have high income economies.
— global coverage
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Accumulation of data sources by world region
HealthcareLCA includes research from study sites around the globe. The majority of assessments are specific to Europe and Central Asia, as well as North America.
— global coverage
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Healthcare field assessed among data sources
Environmental impacts can be assessed within different healthcare fields. Most data sources focus on medicine or surgery, and many assess products or processes that are not specific to any particular field.
— healthcare field
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Disciplinary coverage among data sources
The most studied healthcare disciplines with the HealthcareLCA database include anesthesiology, emergency medicine, and intensive care; infectious disease; and respirology.
— healthcare specialties
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Environmental impact categories assessed
Data sources within the HealthcareLCA database assess a broad range of environmental parameters, with global warming potential, eutrophication potential, ozone depletion potential, acidification potential among the most studied impact categories.
— environmental parameters
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Type of activity data utilized by data sources
HealthcareLCA incorporates data sources that utilize different methods to assess environmental impacts. The majority of data sources take a bottom-up assessment approach utilizing process activity data.
— methodology
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Type of publication
HealthcareLCA includes a broad range of publication types, including peer-reviewed journal articles, reports, commentaries, & theses.
— data sources
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Inventory databases utilized
Data sources within the HealthcareLCA database draw upon a wide variety of life cycle inventory (LCI) databases in order to obtain crucial data to support their analysis. Among data sources that report which inventory database(s) they used, Ecoinvent, DEFRA, ELCD, and GaBi were the most common.
— methodology
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Characterization methods utilized
Among data sources that describe how environmental impacts were characterized, TRACI , ReCiPe, IPCC, and CML were the most commonly used impact assessment methods.
— environmental parameters
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Life cycle assessment software utilized
Among data sources that report using a specific software for conducting their analysis, SimaPro, GaBi, and TRACI were the most commonly used.
— methodology
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Analytical techniques utilized
Data sources employ different analytical techniques to help interpret findings. The most common analyses undertaken involve comparing similar systems  or exploring the contributions of life cycle stages to overall impact.
— environmental parameters
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Scientific journals with the most references
The Journal of the Cleaner Production has published more healthcare-related environmental assessments than any other journal included within the HealthcareLCA database.
— journals
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Most published authors
The HealthcareLCA database includes data sources published by more than 1,000 authors. Here we present those authors who have published the most articles thus far.
— authors
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