Decreasing energy consumption in radiology: How one hospital reduced use and saved big
Energy consumption reduction tactics could decrease greenhouse gas emissions owed to radiology while also saving departments tens of thousands of dollars every year.
A team of experts at University Hospital Basel in Switzerland detailed their strategy for reducing their radiology department’s energy consumption on April 18 in a new paper in Radiology.
To assess their total energy burden, the team first identified all energy-consuming devices within the department. This included 60 medical imaging systems (CT, MRI, PET/CT, radiography, angiography and US units), 80 picture archiving and communication system (PACS) workstations, 165 personal computers, six smart monitors and 53 printers.
“Nonproductive energy consumption by idle energy-consuming devices (eg, computers, monitors, and printers) and, especially, energy-intense radiologic modalities represents huge energy and CO2 emissions savings potential,” corresponding author Tobias Heye and colleagues noted.
Using an activity tracking tool, the team was able to monitor when devices were online and offline by pinging the their IP address or Domain Name System host name in 15-minute intervals.
Although the activity tracker revealed that, overall, the institution complied with policies requiring equipment be powered down when not in use, it did identify several devices that could be turned off more frequently—six medical imaging systems (one CT, two PET/CT, one hybrid CT angiography and two US units), 16 PACS workstations and personal computers, 20 printers and six smart monitors.
The team calculated that powering down these devices more often would result in annual energy savings of 72,337 kWh, or $19,531 in energy costs in 2022. It was estimated that this would result in $60,937 cost savings in 2023.
“A sustained change in behavior toward switching off unused devices is encouraged by displaying the accumulated energy, cost, and CO2 emission savings on live dashboards visible to staff,” the authors explained. “This project achieved substantial CO2 emissions reduction by limiting nonproductive energy consumption, without impacting patient care or overall hospital operations.”
Of note, this study was conducted in Switzerland, an area that consumes far less energy than other European countries or the United States.. The authors estimated that in other European countries, energy consumption could be between 2 to 7 times higher than what was observed in their study, which would result in even greater energy and cost savings if changes were implemented.
The study abstract is available here.
In addition to her background in journalism, Hannah also has patient-facing experience in clinical settings, having spent more than 12 years working as a registered rad tech. She joined Innovate Healthcare in 2021 and has since put her unique expertise to use in her editorial role with Health Imaging.