Climate change is a global health emergency. The UK is committed to limiting the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius. In support of this goal, a £1 billion fund, the Net Zero Innovation Portfolio, has been launched to support the UK’s ten point plan to accelerate commercialisation of low-carbon technologies, systems and business models in power, buildings, and industry.

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As the UKs largest employer, the NHS is responsible for 4% of the nation’s carbon emissions and has a crucial role to play in the 2050 net zero emissions target.

In collaboration with the Greener NHS Programme, the Accelerated Access Collaborative and AHSN Network, the SBRI Healthcare Competition 18 seeks to address the NHS Net-Zero target.

For the competition all proposed innovations had to take into account the supply chain, full product life-cycle, as well as the impact that these solutions have on carbon emissions. Four sub-categories were identified:

• Reducing emissions from care miles
• Reducing emissions from surgical pathways
• Reducing nitrous oxide emissions
• Tools to support low-carbon decision making.

Jump, who work with organisations to run digital employee engagement programmes around sustainability were awarded £99,076.00 for Phase One of this competition and AHSN NENC supported putting together the application.

A key part of the NHS achieving net zero will be informing and motivating its 1.3 million staff to make multiple small changes to the way they work. Jump’s ‘Green Rewards’ schemes encourage employees to change behaviour at seventeen NHS Trusts. These bespoke digital programmes are tailored to each Trust and use gamification techniques to encourage individuals to make sustainable lifestyle choices. To date, Green Rewards have recorded 156,000 sustainable actions.

As part of the SBRI funded programme of work, Jump have worked with The Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust to determine how to encourage staff to adopt low carbon decision making. Decisions could be in procurement, operations or clinical decision making.

AHSN NENC have worked with Jump to ensure that the technology developed is universal and applied our in-depth experience of piloting and championing innovations within multiple NHS Trusts. We have assisted with PPI and forming professional users’ group, to provide invaluable input into the tools development, to ensure that the project results are suitable for uptake by NHS Trusts and that they do not unintentionally exclude any groups.

For further information on Jump and SBRI Net Zero, please get in touch with Dr Sean Gill at [email protected] or visit https://teamjump.co.uk/.