Cutting carbon, saving lives

Harnessing medical technology innovation and competitiveness for healthcare decarbonisation

13 November has been designated as the COP30 Health Day, a milestone serving as a recognition that the climate crisis is also a health crisis.

As healthcare and sustainability are no longer parallel conversations but rather more and more intertwined, innovating for human and planetary health turns into two sides of the same coin: saving lives! Today, we take the opportunity to reflect on the critical need to decarbonise healthcare and how a competitive medical technology industry can contribute to this endeavour.

The medical technology industry is an innovation powerhouse and, as such, has always stood at the frontier of possibility – turning science into healing, and innovation into hope. Now, we are called to this new frontier: to contribute our share to the decarbonisation of healthcare.

Our recent report commissioned by Boston Consulting Group, titled “Decarbonising healthcare: how a competitive medical technology industry can contribute”, dives deeper into the critical climate and health nexus, while also identifying a sector-specific emission baseline. The report further showcases the potential of innovative technologies, describes the barriers, opportunities and key decarbonisation levers for medical technology companies and their feasibility. It also outlines the key pillars of a roadmap and enabling framework for the sector to reach net zero emissions by 2050, in line with a 1.5 °C emissions reduction pathway. But what strikes us most about the many takeaways of the report is the fact that the cost of inaction is likely to exceed the cost of decarbonisation by 2035 due to carbon pricing policies, taxes and fines, raw material prices and risks.

As regards emission reduction, the medical technology industry is making progress in reducing emissions that fall under medtech manufacturers’ direct control (so-called scope one and two emissions). They relate to the manufacturing and assembly stage, though they account for only 5-10% of all medtech global emissions.

The big challenge remains reducing “scope three emissions”, hence, the reduction of those emissions that sit in medtech’s supply chain, up and downstream. Our analysis shows that 45–55% of emissions lie with raw material extraction and reprocessing in the supply chain, 15–20% in the use phase, 10–20% in the end-of-life stage, and 5–10% in packaging.

Renewable energy, renewable heat and efficiency represent the most important short-term decarbonisation levers, bearing a 40% emission reduction potential.

• A further ~50% abatement potential is currently difficult to achieve as important regulatory and economic barriers remain or technologies remain still immature and costly. System collaboration will be the driving force to unlock these emission reduction potentials, and in particular to remove barriers for a Circular Economy that could help the medical technology industryand its value chain reduce around 25-30% of its emissions in the long term.
• Removing today’s barriers and designing an enabling framework to get to climate-resilient sustainable healthcare systems is key. The pending work at the EU level on a new Circular Economy Act, sustainability simplification omnibuses or the proposal for the EU Multiannual Financial Framework are critical policy initiatives for turning Europe’s decarbonisation and competitiveness ambitions into concrete results.

For the upcoming Circular Economy Act, MedTech Europe more specifically recommends pursuing the following ambitions:

• Ensuring regulatory coherence between EU Green Deal legislation and the sector-specific regulatory system of the Medical Devices Regulation and the In Vitro Diagnostic Medical Devices Regulation.
• Securing the free circulation of goods in the EU internal market and boosting an EU internal market for waste in support of the circular economy
• Reinforcing the Single Market and the global harmonisation of standards for waste, circularity and secondary raw materials with respect to the quality and safety for patients and healthcare practitioners
• Promoting a more sustainable pattern of production by making secondary materials more attractive.
• Establishing a framework for financing and rewarding circularity efforts.
• Leverage the transformation synergies of the Green and Digital agendas to increase overall system efficiencies and sustainability performance, such as dematerialisation.
• Seeking international alignment on circularity approaches for the medical technology sector with respect to the quality and security for patients and healthcare practitioners.

As the world gathers at COP30 in Belém, the message is clear:

• Health is an investment, not a cost. Building climate-resilient, sustainable healthcare systems protects people, the planet, and our economy.
• Collaboration will be the game-changer. Europe should foster a structured, high-level Clean Industrial Deal dialogue among policymakers, the medical technology sector, and healthcare system partners to find a common understanding and to take coordinated action. Delivering net zero requires the whole healthcare system to act. Let’s join forces, since we all know: without health, there is no wealth.