Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust has launched its latest green plan to 2028 noting digital tools, projects, and initiatives including its Epic EPR and the MyChart patient portal, as well as remote monitoring, smart docking stations, and sustainability considerations in future procurements, as some of the ways that digital is supporting their green agenda.
The trust commits to prioritising sustainability in the procurement, design, and management of digital services, improving access, using energy-saving technology, and reducing its digital estate power consumption.
Tendai Wileman, chief of staff and director of organisational change and net zero board lead, said: “We have a unique opportunity at Guy’s and St Thomas’ to deliver meaningful change that benefits our patients, people and planet. I’m delighted to launch our green plan which outlines our vision for a greener future, as we work towards achieving net zero in our own operations by 2040. Our green plan will help us continue to build a trust fit for the future – focused on world-leading, preventative and low-carbon healthcare.”
The introduction of the Epic EPR and MyChart patient portal has led to a 31 percent reduction in trust-wide printing, GSTT shares. 22 percent of outpatient appointments are now virtual, reducing the number of in-person appointments, and remote monitoring is credited with avoiding 7,000 appointments and 263,000 patient travel miles. Decommissioning servers and replacing hard disk storage has reduced power consumption by 65 percent.
Looking ahead, the trust plans to accelerate the adoption of home care pathways by focusing on increasing MyChart registrations and determining the sustainability impact of remote monitoring and prioritisation of patient appointments based on risk. Historic paper records in external long-term warehouse storage will be digitised, and the top ten percent of “abnormally energy intensive and inefficient” digital devices will be identified and removed each year by 2027.
All new digital contracts will include sustainability requirements and carbon reduction plans, according to GSTT, with measures to integrate sustainability-focused KPIs for the trust’s six largest IT contracts by 2026. External data hosting will be increased, and it is hoped that annual energy savings will be realised from the data centre programme, to include an 80 percent reduction in energy consumption from physical server decommissions.
The trust commits to evaluating smart docking stations and identifying “non-production” servers for managed power-downs, and sustainability criteria will be worked into hardware refresh activities from 2026 onwards. Digital tools and data will be used to monitor carbon impact and improve transparency across the supply chain.
Wider trend: The role of digital in supporting NHS Net Zero and sustainability
For a recent HTN panel discussion, we explored how organisations are tackling the challenges of paper and digital records, with the help of expert panellists including Stacey Sutherland, clinical digital documentation lead and change lead for trust-wide division at University Hospitals of Derby and Burton and Chesterfield Royal Hospital; Caroline Holmes, deputy director of patient data and records, digital services, at Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust (MSE); Stefan Chetty, director of digital services at Restore Information Management; and Andrew Robertshaw, implementation manager at Restore Information Management.
Cheshire and Wirral Partnership’s latest green plan, highlighted in the trust’s July board meeting, has focused on digital progress and upcoming priorities including cyber security, digital inclusion, virtual pathways and cloud. Looking ahead, Cheshire and Wirral Partnership commits to continuing to utilise the benefits of digital to reduce emissions and improve patient care, using virtual pathways “where appropriate”, considering opportunities to embed sustainability in digital services informed by the Digital Maturity Assessment, and trialling and deploying a power-down software to automatically turn off computer hardware when idle.
Coventry and Warwickshire ICB’s latest green plan has been published, listing ten digital transformation objectives and a timeline for their delivery to 2028. By January 2026, all new digital supplier contracts will include sustainability criteria, requiring carbon reporting and alignment with NHS Net Zero targets; whilst by March 2026, 100 percent of trusts will have completed a Digital Maturity Assessment, focusing on identifying sustainability improvements. The ICB also hopes to explore the implementation of a “PC power down” pilot scheme by October 2026.
