Regional ZEE Green Teams meeting
How can hospitals work together to make endoscopy care more sustainable? During the regional Zero Emission Endoscopy (ZEE) Green Teams meeting, healthcare professionals and researchers from nine hospitals across the Southwest Netherlands region came together to exchange insights, data and practical experiences on reducing the environmental impact of endoscopy care.
The meeting is part of the Zero Emission Endoscopy (ZEE) Sustainable Health Program within Convergence Health & Technology, in which researchers from Erasmus MC, TU Delft and Erasmus University Rotterdam collaborate on developing evidence-based and scalable solutions for more sustainable healthcare.
Sharing data and practical insights
During the meeting, PhD researchers Britt Vegting and Ceyda Izci shared insights from their ongoing research projects, including:
- a Material Flow Analysis of diagnostic colonoscopy procedures,
- a Material Flow Analysis of the endoscopy department,
- and a comparison of different drying methods for endoscopes.
The session also included the results of regional interviews across nine endoscopy departments. Together, the participating hospitals identified 72 sustainability interventions currently being implemented in practice, with an average of 42 sustainability initiatives per hospital.
Beyond sharing results, the discussion focused on barriers that hospitals encounter when implementing sustainable interventions, and on how collaboration within the regional network can help accelerate change.
Building a regional network for sustainable healthcare
Interactive discussions throughout the evening highlighted both the urgency and the opportunities of sustainable healthcare. Topics included the importance of measurable sustainability goals, the balance between infection prevention and sustainability, and the potential for endoscopy departments to become frontrunners in greener hospital care.
The meeting marked an important next step in building a regional network around sustainable endoscopy care and strengthening collaboration between hospitals, researchers and healthcare professionals.
As one participant summarized during the evening:
“If we are one of the most polluting departments, we can also become a frontrunner in sustainable hospital care.”
More about the ZEE program: Zero Emission Endoscopy (ZEE)
Participants from hospitals, universities and clinical practice across the Southwest Netherlands region came together during the regional ZEE Green Teams meeting to exchange experiences and accelerate sustainable endoscopy care.
