Calculating a hospital's IT Energy Efficiency and determining cost effective ways for improvement

The environmental impact of the healthcare sector has become an important factor globally and is continuing to draw the attention of regulators. The energy use of the healthcare sector (whose largest sub-segment is ‘hospitals’) has been growing due to many factors. These factors include the rapid growth and adoption of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in healthcare. The new IT technologies and applications used in healthcare include ‘cloud computing’, ‘mMedicine’, i.e. ‘mobility in Health’, eHealth, and tele(health) care for ‘remote delivery of healthcare services’. In general, the healthcare industry needs to reap the benefits of emerging technologies such as mobile computing and cloud computing, along with the use of Health Information Technology (HIT) to help solve the ever growing operating cost problems. One challenge facing the healthcare sector is how best to calculate the energy efficiency of this very complex sector. The work done over the past few years to analyze and create very energy efficient data centers presents an excellent opportunity for cost effective green IT at hospitals.