Rethinking care models: How virtual health can decarbonize health systems
On 9 April, the IHF Virtual Care Special Interest Group, in partnership with Apollo Hospitals Group India, hosted the latest in its Conversations in Virtual Care series. Chaired by Dr Karan Thakur, Group Vice President for Corporate Affairs and Sustainability at Apollo, the session brought together experts from Healthdirect Australia and Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to explore how virtual care can contribute to decarbonizing health systems, and how to measure and demonstrate that contribution.
Reframing virtual care
Dr Karan Thakur opened the discussion by situating virtual care within the broader sustainability crisis facing health systems worldwide. The health sector accounts for approximately 4% of global carbon emissions, a figure expected to rise as systems expand. As he noted, healthcare cannot continue to grow along its current trajectory. There is simply no carbon headroom. Reframing our approach to virtual care from a convenient alternative to in-person consultations, to a strategic tool for healthcare decarbonization, is both timely and necessary.
Measuring what matters
Rachel de Sain, Director for Sustainability Measurement and Impact at Healthdirect Australia, presented a national framework for calculating emissions avoided through virtual consultations. Patient travel alone accounts for around 10% of Australia’s health and aged care emissions, making it a significant and addressable source.
Rachel shared a comprehensive methodology that captures transport, clinical consumables, diagnostics, as well as the energy and water costs of digital infrastructure.
From substitution to pathway redesign
Kate Townsend, Becky Housley, and David Cruttenden Wood from Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust shared findings from their study published in the British Medical Journal, as the first NHS Trust to formally apply NHS England’s national carbon toolkit to a virtual ward service. Analysing 1,260 patients across respiratory and frailty virtual wards over one year, the team found that virtual ward patients generated four times fewer carbon emissions than equivalent inpatients: 8.4 kg CO2e per patient compared to 37.9 kg. This translated into over 283 tonnes of CO2e avoided and more than 6,000 bed days saved.
Resilience, trade-offs, and equity
The webinar discussion also acknowledged important trade-offs. Rachel de Sain highlighted that digital care is not “zero carbon”: the impacts of data infrastructure, devices, and increasing digital demand must be accounted for transparently.
Equally significant is the risk that digital exclusion reinforces health inequalities. Any sustainability framing must explicitly address access, digital literacy, and infrastructure gaps. When discussing the sustainability opportunities of virtual care, equity and inclusion must be part of the conversation.
From evidence to system transformation
Dr Sai Praveen Haranath of Apollo Hospitals emphasized that virtual care is already embedded in routine clinical practice in some settings, with significant indirect benefits such as reduced family travel and accommodation costs.
The panel agreed that unlocking the full sustainability potential of virtual care requires more than data. It demands:
- governance structures that embed safety and sustainability
- interoperable digital platforms
- a cultural shift where environmental costs are part of clinical and business decision-making.
Sustainability as a driver of better care
At the IHF, we believe that decarbonization is now an essential objective for hospital leaders. This is where the IHF’s Geneva Sustainability Centre (GSC) is playing a critical role.
Virtual care sits at the intersection of sustainability and system transformation, an area that remains underexplored in many discussions. The opportunity is to position sustainability as a driver of better care models. By reframing virtual care in terms of avoided demand, prevention, and pathway redesign, sustainability becomes central to healthcare leadership and strategy.
However, much of healthcare decarbonization still focuses on mitigating emissions within existing models of care. Virtual care introduces a fundamentally different lever: emissions avoidance through upstream redesign of care pathways.
The sustainability case for virtual care must be explicit, measurable, and holistic. It sits at the intersection of:
- carbon reduction (particularly through avoided travel)
- patient experience (improved access and convenience)
- system efficiency (reduced pressure on acute services).
The opportunity is to quantify these co-benefits together, rather than treating sustainability as an add-on.
This transformation is not only about digital substitution but pathway redesign. The biggest gains don’t come from simply swapping in virtual consultations, they come from rethinking entire care models (remote-first pathways, hospital-at-home, continuous monitoring). This idea was front and centre in the webinar.
Virtual care should be positioned within a broader prevention-first model. The strongest sustainability gains come when virtual care supports early intervention, monitoring, and prevention. Despite this prevention remains structurally underfunded. This is a leadership and system design issue, not a technology one.
An underreported dimension of this debate is that virtual care can build climate and system resilience, not just mitigation. Virtual models strengthen system resilience by maintaining continuity of care during climate disruptions, reducing dependence on physical infrastructure, and enabling decentralized, flexible care delivery. In this sense, virtual care supports both adaptation and mitigation, strengthening health systems against future shocks.
Will Clark, Sustainability Director at the GSC, summarized the potential to use sustainability as a driver of better care:
“What emerged clearly from the webinar is that virtual care represents more than a service innovation focused on access and efficiency. There is a significant opportunity to reframe it as a decarbonization strategy. Its real strategic value lies not only in delivering care differently, but in avoiding demand for high-carbon care pathways, including patient travel, carbon-intensive infrastructure, and resource use – a true win-win. From a sustainability perspective, this reframing is critical.”
