Consideration of Carbonomics in Health Technology Assessment to Support Healthcare Decision-Making

OBJECTIVES: Healthcare systems are increasing their commitment in supporting environmental considerations in working practice. Health technology assessment (HTA) bodies, such as, the National Institute of Health & Care Excellence (NICE) have pledged a commitment towards sustainability. However, currently societal, and environmental considerations are not wholly embedded within health technology appraisals.

The impact of carbon emissions across technologies should be factored into the assessment of new health technologies since healthcare internationally contributes between four and five percent of global net carbon dioxide emissions.

METHODS: Seven HTA agencies (representing England, Scotland, Canada, France, Spain, Italy, Denmark) were identified and systematically reviewed across available material to determine carbonomics related information, across the following search terms: carbonomics, carbon footprint, environmental and environment.

RESULTS: Across seven HTA bodies, only Spain and England had a commitment towards a green agenda within their strategy. Six out of the seven did not include carbonomics related terms within their assessment framework, only Canada (CADTH) currently has this in-progress. The NICE submission template guide has no information related to carbonomics.

CONCLUSIONS: It has been identified that a small proportion of leading health technology bodies operate in a similar fashion with the mission to support an environmental agenda, however, limited implementation of a robust framework to support appraisal ratification.

Through assessing HTA agencies on a global stage, key markets should be factoring carbonomics to support healthcare decision-making and establish greater alignment to the global carbon commitment. For example, the tendering process for vaccines within the United Kingdom (UK) takes environmental factors into account and these learnings can be applied to other technologies. This study will look to highlight the importance of carbonomics within healthcare decision-making.