Previously submitted to: Journal of Medical Internet Research (no longer under consideration since May 16, 2024)
Date Submitted: Apr 16, 2023
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
How can otolaryngology use technology to reduce its carbon footprint?
ABSTRACT
Climate change is arguably the biggest health threat of the 21st century. The NHS is a big polluter contributing 6.3% of carbon emissions in England. By drawing upon literature and my own insights, different mechanisms of promoting sustainability will be explored in otolaryngology. Making otolaryngology greener is possible and not only is it the right thing to do but it is also economically sound. Some of the proposed changes are small scale and behavioural that can be adopted at the individual or departmental level. Other proposed changes such as digitisation will require organisational change and significant investments. However, both big and small changes are required given the massive impact that climate change can have on our health and future. It is important however to remember that patients’ wellbeing remains the first priority and that for a lot of the proposals, more research is needed before being implemented.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.