Health Systems Task Force

At the former Prince of Wales’ invitation, leaders from across the healthcare system have come together to form a Health Systems Task Force as part of the Sustainable Markets Initiative. Together, the Task Force is taking joint, scalable action to accelerate the delivery of net zero healthcare – to improve individual, societal, and planetary health.

Convened by AstraZeneca CEO Sir Pascal Soriot, the SMI Health Systems Task Force launched at the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26).  This public-private partnership brings together CEOs and leaders from AstraZeneca, GSK, Merck KGaA, Novo Nordisk, Roche, Samsung Biologics, Sanofi, Karolinska Institutet, National Health Service England, the Sustainable Healthcare Coalition, UNICEF, the University of Pavia, and the World Health Organization (WHO). 

Ahead of COP27, Task Force members have launched sector-first commitments, actions and recommendations to deliver near-term targets and support the transition to net zero, sustainable healthcare. These actions focus on three priority areas: Supply Chain and Patient Care Pathways Decarbonisation, and the use of Digital Innovation in Clinical Research.

Introducing Patient Earth

The climate crisis is the biggest public health crisis of our time. Watch our #PatientEarth film here to learn more about the interconnection between the health of people and our planet, and why action at scale is critical.

Letter of Intent

An industry first, the SMI Health Systems Task Force was created to accelerate the delivery of shared ambitions and stretching targets towards achieving a net zero health system. By uniting behind a set of joint commitments, the Task Force is committed to taking scalable action towards delivering sector-firsts and driving decisive action for healthcare and industry.

Health systems are responding to the impacts of the climate crisis but are also responsible for 4-5% of total global net emissions. Recognising that the sector must play its part, members of the Health Systems Task Force are committed to a collaborative approach towards driving action in the following three priority areas, which have been identified as drivers of the greatest positive impact in the sector:

• Supply Chain emissions drive more than 50% of overall health care emissions. Collective actions unveiled by the Task Force include aligning on a set of common supplier standards to incentivise decarbonisation efforts across the supply chain, jointly pursuing renewable power purchase agreements and exploring green transportation corridors.

• Patient Care Pathways have a critical role to play in reducing emissions and improving access to high-quality care and health outcomes. Task Force members will build an end-to-end care pathway emissions calculation standard and tool that allows stakeholders to measure and track emissions across the care pathway, and will publish product-level LCA data to increase transparency on treatment emissions

• Digital Health opportunities on clinical trials and increasing the use of digital innovation is key to achieving more sustainable health systems. The Task Force is committing to leverage digital health solutions to decarbonise clinical trials, including the creation of a common framework to measure the emissions from clinical trials.

Task Force Members

Further information

For roundtable and Task Force enquiries please contact:

Email: info@sustainable-markets.org