The 11 participating students of the Green Care Thesis Lab presented the results of their interdisciplinary work to 30 professionals. In three rounds, they talked to each other about successfully implementing greening on the shop floor, copying successes and transparency in the cooperation between health insurers, producers and healthcare buyers.
The students came from eight different programmes at Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Universities and Hogeschool Leiden. They presented insights on how to successfully implement greening on the shop floor - such as replacing a single-use oxygen sensor for a hybrid variant in the paediatric ward of the Reinier de Graaf hospital, or reducing medicine waste in Surgery at the Haga hospital.
'Don't be afraid to copy successes'
The students noticed that many places - departments, hospitals - are working on the same sustainability issues. Their advice: “Don't be afraid to copy successes ('proudly copied”) and discuss how you can take sustainability a step further together'.
There are initiatives and methods, from regional to European, to learn from and join - organise the exchange of these more effectively with each other. For example, by joining the FAIR initiative to make data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable, and thus consume less energy with AI.
'Organise a supplier day to green the procurement process'
Of course, sustainability goes beyond hospital walls and transparency in the cooperation between health insurers, manufacturers and healthcare buyers is desperately needed. This need not always be via the standard route. For instance, one piece of advice to hospital purchasing groups is to organise a supplier day to get to know each other better and talk to each other about sustainability and what you consider important. This in turn makes for better procurement procedures.
