Launching today at the 79th World Health Assembly with more than 14,000 entries across all of healthcare, the first global database of its kind.
GENEVA, 20 May – If healthcare was a country, it would be the fifth largest carbon emitter on the planet – between the European Union and the Russian Federation, with CO2 emissions in the sector higher than all of aviation and shipping combined.
Yet, until today, carbon data has been available for less than 1% of the products a clinician or a health system uses each day.
The Lancet MedZero is built to close that gap. Launching today at the 79 th World Health Assembly, the platform ( www.medzerocarbon.com ) is the first to provide comprehensive carbon analytics across the full spectrum of healthcare, from pharmaceuticals and surgical instruments to chest X-rays and blood tests.
Convened by The Lancet and developed by an international academic consortium, it has been designed by clinicians, for clinicians, with over 14,000 entries at launch.
The platform is built to inform decisions at every level of the health system with the aim of helping hospitals and clinics save money, reduce waste, improve patient care, and tackle climate change. For example: [1]
The platform’s launch at the World Health Assembly brought together the Editor in Chief of The Lancet, the Minister of Health of the Philippines, the International Medical Secretary for Doctors Without Borders, the UK NHS’s Chief Sustainability Officer, and the Permanent Secretary of the Thailand Ministry of Public Health.
“The climate crisis is a health crisis. But climate action depends on credible data.” Dr Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet , said ahead of the launch, “The Lancet MedZero plans to create a shared global infrastructure of knowledge about the carbon footprint of health systems. Measurement is the foundation of accountability, and accountability is the motivation for action.”
The problem the Lancet MedZero solves
More than 100 countries, covering over half the world’s population, have now committed to tackling climate change through a WHO-led Alliance for Transformative Action on Climate and Health .
Until now, that data has been fragmented and inaccessible. The Lancet MedZero was built to change that.
For their hospitals and health systems to turn those commitments into action, they need transparent and trustworthy data to make evidence-based decisions. A surgeon redesigning a care pathway, a pharmacist restocking a hospital supply, a procurement lead renegotiating supply contracts, and a health minister setting national strategy: all of them need product-level carbon data, quickly and reliably.
A global collaboration built for scale
The Lancet MedZero is a global collaboration of clinicians, engineers, data scientists, economists, and public health professionals working to support healthcare decarbonisation worldwide. Convened by The Lancet , it brings together expertise in healthcare delivery, carbon analytics, and system transformation, with contributors from across Asia-Pacific, Europe, and North America. This diversity reflects a shared commitment to advancing sustainable healthcare across regions.
Academic partners: Health Intervention and Technology Assessment Program (HITAP), Thailand; National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), Japan; National University of Singapore; Northeastern University, USA; University of Birmingham, UK ; University of Melbourne, Australia
About The Lancet: The Lancet is one of the world’s leading medical journals, published since 1823. It has a long-standing commitment to climate and health, including through the Lancet Countdown, the Lancet Commission on Sustainable Healthcare, and multiple commissions on planetary health, pollution, among others.
Contact
Learn more about the platform at https://medzerocarbon.com .
For media enquiries, contact Ms Jit Sohal ( info@lancetmedzero.com & +6580950307)
ANNEX: The University of Birmingham’s role in the Lancet MedZero
“Clinicians and procurement teams are being asked to decarbonise healthcare without the evidence to do it effectively. The Lancet MedZero changes that. Our role is to ensure the evidence is robust and transparent — every carbon estimate is traceable, clearly labelled for quality, and explicit about the decisions it can support. Getting the science right is what turns this from something impressive into something genuinely useful.”
Professor Slava Jankin, Chair in Data Science and Government, University of Birmingham
The University of Birmingham’s role
The University of Birmingham leads the platform’s work on novel methods and artificial intelligence (Domain 5). This includes developing the evidence provenance and quality framework that underpins every carbon estimate — a structured, machine-readable system that tracks how results are produced and defines how they can be used in decision-making. Birmingham is also advancing methods to combine data from multiple sources into single, reliable estimates that properly reflect uncertainty. The team is developing tools to rapidly extract evidence from scientific literature and approaches to identify where new data will have the greatest impact. This work draws on expertise from the University’s Centre for AI in Government (CAIG) and the Institute for Data and AI.
Benefit to the UK healthcare system
The NHS has committed to reaching net zero by 2040 for direct emissions and 2045 for its supply chain — the most ambitious target of any national health system. Delivering on this requires detailed, product-level carbon data at a scale not previously available.
The Lancet MedZero provides this capability, offering NHS teams high-quality carbon estimates for thousands of medical products, tailored to UK supply chains and infrastructure. It enables trusts to identify emissions hotspots, compare products on environmental, clinical and cost factors, and track progress against targets with confidence. For clinicians, the platform makes the carbon impact of care decisions visible, supporting the design of lower-carbon clinical pathways.
Next steps for the UK
The University of Birmingham is coordinating a Horizon Europe proposal to scale the platform’s impact, including enhanced evidence governance, combined carbon and resilience assessments, and real-world testing across healthcare settings, including NHS England.
If funded, this will support practical deployment in procurement and clinical decision-making, alongside a cross-national survey of public attitudes to sustainable healthcare. In parallel, the University of Birmingham is working with partners to develop an open standard for evidence quality and reporting in healthcare carbon analytics, with the aim of informing NHS procurement frameworks and national sustainability reporting.
Carbon analytics, volume, and cost data drawn for each of the three examples from www.medzerocarbon.com and underlying data sources.