Telemedicine visits for cancer care may not only be more convenient and easier to schedule than in-person appointments, they're also better for the planet, new research by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists shows.
Telemedicine visits for cancer care may not only be more convenient and easier to schedule than in-person appointments, they're also better for the planet, new research by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists shows.
Based on an analysis of data from a regional cancer center, the researchers calculate that, nationwide, cancer care that utilizes telehealth and local care would generate 33.1% less greenhouse gas emissions than the traditional model of in-person care, primarily because of reduced travel to medical appointments. The findings presented today at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and published simultaneously in the journal JAMA Oncology, suggest that an approach to care adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic can have significant environmental benefits.
"While health care in the United States provides health benefits to many people, it generates substantial amounts of greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change and inadvertently harm health," says Andrew Hantel, MD, a faculty member in the Divisions of Leukemia and Population Sciences at Dana-Farber who led the study with Gregory Abel, MD, MPH, a senior physician at Dana-Farber, and Jonathan Slutzman, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital. "We wanted to explore the potential reductions in emissions that can be achieved with a decentralized approach to cancer care that includes telehealth. To do so, we used data generated during the 'natural experiment' of the pandemic, when care shifted from an in-person to a telemedicine-preferred model."
Read more at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
