Digital health brings technology and patients together to enable healthcare from anywhere. While this model of care can is accessible without transportation or physical facilities, digital health still leaves an ever-growing environmental footprint.

Leading remote care providers minimize these impacts by partnering to create solutions that are both environmentally and financially sustainable.

The Environmental Footprint of Digital Health

While some remote care solutions are inherently more sustainable than traditional models of care, many require additional technologies and manufactured materials. These devices, tools, and assets enable continuous connectivity and oversight of critical biometric data, and are necessary for millions of patients managing their care at home.

But, like any healthcare model, remote care solutions must meet a unique balance of quality, affordability, and satisfaction to properly serve patients and the many factors impacting their access to care.

Sometimes, this balance means more economical options like single-use devices and technologies are chosen by providers engaging in virtual care . This is simply because it is logically cheaper in the short-term, and is a seemingly less complex model to deploy at high volumes.

Although this method reduces up-front costs and logistics associated with reprocessing, refurbishing, and reusing devices, it is ultimately less sustainable. This is true both financially and environmentally when delivering remote care in the long term and at transformative scale.

Single-User Devices vs. Reusable Devices

Single-User devices are technologies that are sent to a patient and are not recovered at the end of their program. This means the technology stays with the patient, even after their program and device usage has stopped. Depending on the device, patients will keep them for home use, and will eventually dispose of the item. In this model, this is where the RPM device life-cycle ends.

In contrast, programs with Reusable devices do recover these technologies from patients after their program has ended. These devices are then reprocessed (cleaned, refurbished, disinfected, etc.) and are put back into inventory to safely serve additional patients in a given program.

The environmental benefits of the reusable device model are obvious. Recovering and reusing devices results in fewer technologies being manufactured and disposed of. This minimizes the many footprints associated with device production and electronic waste management. Additionally, removing the need for patients to dispose devices themselves ensures proper, sustainable disposal methods can be followed at scale. With fewer devices becoming waste, another range of processes and footprints is also reduced, improving digital health sustainability.