CEOs from six large bio/pharmaceutical companies—AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck KGaA, Novo Nordisk, Roche, and Sanofi—and Samsung Biologics, a biologics CDMO have announced joint action under the Sustainable Markets Initiative (SMI) Health Systems Task Force, public–public partnership form achieve near-term greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets and low-carbon health systems.  

The Task Force is taking scalable action to collectively address emissions across supply chains, patient care pathways, and clinical trials. This includes aligning on a set of common supplier standards to incentivize decarbonization efforts across the supply chain and jointly pursuing renewable power purchase agreements and green transportation corridors.

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 life-cycle assessments (LCA) data to increase transparency on treatment emissions. In addition, a common framework to measure the emissions from clinical trials will be created.

Member companies of the Task Force have identified three priority areas to decarbonize at pace with the greatest positive impact in the sector: supply chains, patient care pathways, and clinical trials. Specific targets are outlined below.

Achieving net-zero emissions. The Task Force aims to achieving net-zero emissions through the following actions: (1) aligning on a set of common supplier standards; (2) switching to renewable power; (3) jointly evaluating renewable power purchase agreements in China and India in 2023; (4) exploring green heat solutions by 2025 to accelerate the adoption of scalable technologies; and (5) transitioning car fleets to zero-emission vehicles by 2030 and jointly exploring green transportation corridors by 2025.

Reducing the emissions of patient care. The Task Force aims to reducing the emissions of patient care through the following actions: (1) collaborating with stakeholders, including health policy makers, regulators, payers, providers, healthcare professionals, and patient groups to raise awareness on the need and opportunity to decarbonize care pathways; (2) building an end-to-end care pathway emissions calculation standard and tool for specific diseases that allows stakeholders to measure and track emissions across the care pathway and assess decarbonization strategies; and (3) aligning on a common framework to perform LCAs, with private-sector members also committed to publishing product-level LCA data across their product portfolio to increase transparency on treatment emissions.

Committing to digital health solutions to decarbonize clinical trials. The Task Force is also committing to digital health solutions to decarbonize clinical trials through the following actions: (1) committing to a common framework by 2023 and subsequently starting to measure greenhouse gas emissions in Phase II and III clinical trials and reporting Phase II and III trial emissions for trials starting in 2025; (2) aligning new trials to companies’ decarbonization pathway and setting trial emissions reduction targets for 2030 at the latest; (3) incentivizing clinical research organizations and clinical trial-related suppliers to commit to a framework to measure and reduce emissions, including through the use of digital solutions; and (4) targeting 90%+ of trials starting in 2025 to include a review of how digital solutions can reduce emissions.

In addition to private-sector members, the SMI Health Systems Task Force includes leaders from the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, and healthcare, academic and non-governmental organizations. The Task Force is partnering with the WHO-convened Alliance for Transformative Action on Health and Climate (ATACH) to provide recommendations to over 60 governments that have committed at the Minister-of-Health level to deliver climate-resilient and low-carbon health systems.

Source: Sustainable Markets Initiative