Combating climate change is one of the most pressing challenges facing humankind. ICT has been recognized as essential for society’s transition to a low-carbon economy. Innovative use of telecommunications, such as telemedicine – the use of telecommunications technologies to deliver health-related services and information – at home and in the hospital can reduce energy use and travel.

Peter Håkansson, Senior Research Engineer at Ericsson, says the study – The Potential Carbon-Dioxide (CO2) Emissions Reduction from a Mobile Telemedicine System – used a simplified life-cycle assessment (LCA) and focused on a specific healthcare process: home-based care of elderly patients with chronic leg and foot ulcers in Sweden.

“Communication between the homecare nurse and the doctor in a clinic or hospital through teleconsultation, such as video clips, digital photos, text and voice messages, has shown that in many case studies, face-to-face visits can be reduced by at least 50 percent,” Håkansson says.

The idea of this kind of telemedicine, he says, is not to replace face-to-face consultations with the medical practitioner entirely, but rather to avoid and reduce unnecessary consultations (and related transportation), while maintaining a high quality of care.

“When you consider that these patients visit the doctor an average of 12 times a year, the introduction of modern telemedicine means that those visits can be cut to six,” Håkansson says. “That means reducing CO2 emissions for an average patient by 63kg per year, a decrease of 48 percent on a conventional homecare process.”

ICT remains a relatively energy-lean sector, with relatively low CO2 emissions despite increasing subscriber numbers. The energy consumption for a computer and mobile phone when using the homecare application is negligible compared with the reduction in energy use from reducing the need for transport.

In Sweden, about 33,000 patients are regularly treated for leg or foot ulcers in their homes. “If telemedicine were introduced nationwide for the entire patient group, it would reduce total CO2 emissions by 2100 metric tons per year,” Håkansson says. “This would be equivalent to 84,000 hours of driving on a motorway (figures for Swedish cars) or a total transport-cost saving of SEK 90 million.”

It is important to note that these figures represent only one of many potential patient groups and care processes where mobile telemedicine can be introduced to reduce CO2 emissions.

As the study has shown, by encouraging the use of applications that reduce travel, such as mobile telemedicine, telecommunications can be a significant factor in accelerating a shift towards a low-carbon economy and tackling climate change on a global scale, Håkansson says.