What You Should Know:
- Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) and Philips announced a collaboration to reduce the health system’s carbon footprint with a project focused on measuring and addressing energy consumption in the radiology department.
- Radiology is an especially high contributor to the CO2 emissions responsible for climate change with its heavy energy, equipment, and supply usage. Philips and VUMC will analyze radiology energy consumption data from VUMC’s diagnostic imaging devices, namely MR, CT, ultrasound and X-ray, to build computational models on which to run efficiency simulations. The lifecycle analysis of medical equipment and measurements of equipment energy consumption will be supplemented with on-site interviews with VUMC staff and faculty.
- The teams will then summarize piloted interventions to test the reduction of the department’s carbon footprint. The goal is not only to enhance VUMC’s environmental strategy but to also enable others in the industry to do the same by publishing the simulation findings as a blueprint for carbon reduction strategies in radiology.
