Medical Delta Program ‘Sustainable hospitals – from science to practice’

Hospitals exist to make people better. At the same time, they are indirectly harmful: the healthcare sector is responsible for 7% of the Netherlands' CO2 footprint and 13% of our national material consumption. The impact of healthcare on the climate, environment, and consequently public health is significant and must be reduced quickly. Healthcare professionals, the healthcare sector, and the government agree on this.

These parties have therefore made sustainability agreements in the 'Green Deal Sustainable Healthcare 3.0'. It includes goals such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions, decreasing (residual) waste, and significantly lowering the use of resources.

To achieve the ambitious goals, it is necessary to develop circular strategies that are safe and scalable.

And this is possible: sustainability initiatives have been set in motion across the entire healthcare sector. The Medical Delta Program 'Sustainable hospitals – from science to practice' focuses on greening hospitals and aims to further accelerate and optimize the sustainability process

From university to the hospital…

Promising steps are being taken through academic projects in university hospitals. The risk, however, is that these remain confined to the academic sphere. The Medical Delta Program 'sustainable hospitals – from science to practice' builds bridges to all hospitals in the Netherlands. While the universities provide the scientific foundation, the hospitals can validate and apply these insights. With the practical knowledge and experience gained, projects and insights are further optimized and scaled up

To achieve successful implementation, it is important that the interventions are sufficiently substantiated (validated) from various perspectives, including sustainability, costs, workload, and alignment with clinical practice. Therefore, involving hospitals and healthcare practice at an early stage is crucial. 

... and from hospital to university

In many Dutch hospitals, so-called 'Green Teams' have been formed. Hospital staff initiate methods and innovations themselves to promote sustainability. 

In several of these bottom-up initiatives, there has been limited (or no) evidence-based research conducted on, for example, the actual effects on the environment and climate, and there are no cost analyses or analyses of the effects on workload and quality. Before further scaling can take place, validation is necessary. The Medical Delta Program 'Sustainable hospitals – from science to practice' also plays a bridging role here, but this time from hospital practice to science. 

To achieve all this, the program is building an ecosystem of sustainable living labs in the healthcare sector in the Zuid-Holland region. Additionally, it examines the best ways to raise awareness of and promote the use of sustainable interventions (dissemination) among healthcare professionals, thereby accelerating scaling and achieving the ambitions of the Green Deal 3.0. 

Goals

The Medical Delta Program 'Sustainable hospitals – from science to practice' aims to accelerate and scale the greening of hospitals at all levels by:

• Translating research projects into hospital practice through further validation, implementation support, and business cases.
• Validating sustainable interventions developed and implemented by Green Teams.
• Creating a 'multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM)' framework for making appropriate decisions in so-called 'trade-offs.'
• Establishing an ecosystem of sustainable living labs in the healthcare sector.
• Developing dissemination strategies for the scaling and implementation of sustainable interventions in hospitals

Contact

For more information or if you're interested in participating, please contact one of our innovation managers.