A DATABASE OF ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENTS WITHIN HEALTHCARE

Disciplines / Medicine

Gastroenterology care provision appears to be a significant contributor to healthcare’s environmental impacts, partly due to high caseloads, non-renewable waste streams, resource-intensive decontamination processes, and an increasing trend toward complex, single-use devices.

Endoscopy suites are known to have one of the largest waste streams among hospital departments, with more than 3 kilograms of waste being generated per bed per day.

Life cycle assessments of a range of endoscopic products and procedures are needed to inform targeted interventions like improved waste segregation, increased recycling, and the minimization of single-use items. Analyzing the sustainability of each step can identify incremental but impactful changes to help lessen the specialty’s overall environmental impact.

As the evidence base continues to accumulate, our team at HealthcareLCA is collating all the data for you right here.

What to learn more about the environmental impacts of gastroenterology?

Our database contains environmental impact estimates for a range of gastroenterology-related products and activities, including duodenoscopes, endoscopic instruments, endoscopic procedures and more!

Below we present a gallery view of all the gastroenterology-related data sources currently included within our database. Scroll through and expand tiles to learn more about each data source, including its scope and methods.

If you want to explore environmental impact estimates for specific products and activities, scroll down further to explore the database itself, again filtered to only show gastroenterology-related studies.

— "In July, 2020, in The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology, James Maurice and colleagues¹ called for the reinvention of endoscopy. The environmental costs of this practice had been exposed: the tools and the systems that have been built around them generate huge volumes of waste and contribute substantially to the environmental impact of a carbon-intensive health-care system.2 The status quo is unsustainable."

Baddeley et al., 2022

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Gastroenterology:

the environmental impacts.