The environmental benefit of a Digital Advisory Board

An advisory board is where a group of specific experts attend a meeting to provide recommendations, professional advice and insight on a specific topic or field of expertise. Traditionally, advisory boards are carried out in person. Experts can be based anywhere in the world, so advisory boards tend to involve a lot of travel, which also creates large carbon emissions.

As advisory boards are proven to help support the understanding on scientific or healthcare-related issues, they have become an important part of healthcare. It is our goal to keep everyone in touch and help discover insights in real time, whilst reducing the negative impact of carbon emissions that come with such a beneficial meeting.

medCrowd supports this by running advisory boards digitally. medCrowd allows health care professionals (HCPs) to join meetings using instant messaging, from anywhere at any time, whilst protecting confidential information to the required standards. All insights can be provided in comfort from the HCP's chosen location making travel unnecessary and insights accurately documented.

One roundtrip from London to Germany for one person alone, emits 0.3 tonnes of CO2 (see figure 1). This is around half the carbon footprint that one single person is expected to generate in one year according to the carbon emissions calculator.

A roundtrip from London to America (New York) produces 1.8 tonnes of CO2 (see figure 2), which is exactly three times the amount of emissions that is expected by a single person in one year. These are shocking numbers. To help the current environmental climate, we believe using technology to its full potential will reduce carbon emissions.

If an expert was required to travel for a face to face advisory board, joining digitally would significantly reduce their carbon emissions. As advisory boards usually have 5 or more experts, the positive impact of this change for the environment is very important. Reducing travel while still having the insight and expertise needed, will help combat climate change by minimising carbon emissions related to face to face advisory boards.