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Nordic Conference on Sustainable Healthcare 
- Nordic insights for a greener healthcare 

Welcome to The Nordic Conference on Sustainable Healthcare – the annual Nordic meeting place for everyone involved in making healthcare more sustainable. The conference will gather stakeholders from the healthcare sector for a discussion around challenges that follow the increased requirements to organisations’ environmental impacts and sustainability performance – and solutions to these challenges.

Registration fee:

Members in NCSH: 3 500 SEK excl. VAT (register by clicking here>>)
Early Bird: 3 900 SEK excl.VAT (until January 15, 2018)
Regular price: 4 900 SEK excl. VAT

Extract from the agenda:

• Study of interaction between hospitals and suppliers of sustainable products
• Sustainability at Kaiser Permanente, one of the world’s biggest healthcare consortia
• Tools for sustainable construction and maintenance of healthcare buildings
• International knowledge from sustainable health and care systems
• How can procurement improve organisations’ sustainability
• Antibiotic resistance – modern day’s major healthcare challenge

The Nordic Conference on Sustainable Healthcare 2018 will look beyond the Nordics. We have invited speakers from the USA, Israel, the UK and other parts of the world. This way our participants will get a unique opportunity to broaden their network, reach new markets and get new insights in what is needed to boost environmental and sustainability efforts in the Nordic healthcare sector.

The conference and the exhibition is a meeting place for companies with sustainable solutions from a wide range of sectors – CleanTech, MedTech, Life Science etc. These companies provide services and products that address negative impacts from healthcare, both environmental and social. Moreover, we have invited companies from construction, architecture, logistics, digitalisation and many other sectors and branches that have significant influence on healthcare’s overall sustainability performance.

The conference is in English, and there are seminars in Swedish among the parallel sessions.
 

Speakers

The conference is held in collaboration between Aktuell Hållbarhet and Nordic Center for Sustainable Healthcare.

Nordic Center for Sustainable Healthcare is conducting a survey which aims to examine how suppliers of sustainable solutions to the healthcare experience the procurement process. The results from this survey will be presented at the Nordic Conference on Sustainable Healthcare on February 15th 2018. The results will also be available to procurers and policy makers in the healthcare.

If you are a supplier of sustainable solutions to healthcare organisations - please contribute with your experiences to this survey. It consists of 9 questions and your answers will be processed anonymously. Click here to get to the survey >>

If you have any questions or want to know more about sustainable healthcare, please contact us at or +46 40 606 55 80.

Thank you for your cooperation!

The Nordic Conference on Sustainable Healthcare is the annual Nordic meeting place for everyone involved in making healthcare more sustainable. This year it will take place on February 15th 2018. The conference will gather stakeholders from the healthcare sector for a discussion around challenges that follow the increased requirements to organisations’ environmental impacts and sustainability performance – and solutions to these challenges.

We have now updated the programme with new speakers at some of the parallel sessions. The following speakers have been added: 

- Rosemary Kumwenda, Sustainable Procurement in Health Sector, UNDP
- Charlotte Ruben, Architect and Partner, White Arkitekter 
- Martin Döllmeier, Sales Manager, Cadolto 
- Anna Tenghamamar, Environmental Specialist, Region Västra Götaland
- Daniel J. Vukelich, President Assossiation of Medical Device Reprocessors, USA 

The conference and the exhibition is a meeting place for companies with sustainable solutions from a wide range of sectors – CleanTech, MedTech, Life Science etc. These companies provide services and products that address negative impacts from healthcare, both environmental and social. Moreover, we have invited companies from construction, architecture, logistics, digitalisation and many other sectors and branches that have significant influence on healthcare’s overall sustainability performance.

The conference is in English, and there are seminars in Swedish among the parallel sessions.

NCSH has received funding from the Swedish Energy Agency for a project to internationalize innovation clusters. 

The project aims to create a better innovation climate for energy efficient healthcare solutions and increase focus on this as a Swedish export area. The overall aim is also to generate business in energy efficient healthcare which in turn creates new jobs and generates tax income by export. Druing the roject Nordic Center for Sustainable Healthcare will, among other things:

- Initiate collaboration with 3 international innovation arenas.

- Formalize NCSH and form a steering committee

- Create a broader platform for, and knowledge of, Sustainable Healthcare among national agencies

- Recruit more members to NCSH

- A report with analysis on what barriers companies and other stakeholders see when they go, or try to go, international. 

- Lay the foundation for a new project with focus on a permanent international innovation cluster.

If you want more information on the project, please contact:
Daniel Eriksson at  or +46 707 94 42 13

NCSH is one of around 15 members in the Nordic Innovation “Health Export task force”. The task force is initiated by the Nordic Ministry Council and aims to unite and increase Nordic export of health-related services and products. Around three organisations from each member country (Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Iceland) represent different areas of health export and NCSH is added as a pan-Nordic actor. Sustainable Healthcare has been identified as one of four Nordic strongholds within Nordic health export together with Smart Digital Solutions, Welfare technology and Personalized care.

This means that members in NCSH can look forward to increased efforts to expand the area of Sustainable healthcare and projects that supports those efforts.

A first report from the task force will be published during 2017.

Contact Daniel Eriksson, if you want to learn more about NCSH and future projects.

#nordicsolutions

We are glad to introduce our latest member in NCSH, European Health Property network.

The European Health Property Network (EuHPN) is a pan-European, non-profit network which acts as a knowledge exchange hub for organisations and individuals with interests in planning, designing, building and financing all kinds of health and social care facilities - from the largest university teaching hospitals to the smallest clinics and care homes. EuHPN now has more than 20 member organisations and associates in 15 EU member states, covering strategic planning expertise, healthcare architecture and design, capital investment policy and academic research in the healthcare built environment. The network runs regular regional events as well as a 3-day annual workshop, held each year in a different European city. Find out more at www.euhpn.eu.

On October the 5th NCSH together with Västra Götalandsregionen (VGR) went to Skaraborg hospital in Skövde for a combined study tour and workshop.

Skaraborg hospital is a part of VGR with over 53 000 employees (90 % in healthcare). Skaraborg hospital have a very innovative work within sustainable healthcare. Among many other things they have installed 1 MW solar power that will supply around 10 % of the hospitals electricity consumption and on very sunny days up to 30 %. They also have solar heating systems installed for rehab pools and many different projects within energy efficiency. This is all a part of VGR:s goal on reducing energy consumption by 50 % by 2030.

Together with the local municipality they also have a second-hand system for furniture and other hospital equipment and around 1 000 items are exchanged every year within that system, a truly circular solution.

VGR held a presentation on resource management and they have some very impressive results on refurbishment of hospital furniture and equipment but also on reducing food and textile waste.

Besides presentations from Skaraborg hospital in Skövde, Västfastigheter and VGR we also got to listen to NCSH members Siemens, Enrad, Schneider electrics and Bauer water technology’s solutions for a more energy efficient and sustainable healthcare.

Some of the conclusions

• Saving energy on heating systems are easier than saving energy on the operations that take place in the hospitals
• There is a need energy efficient medtech as the energy used for operations is increasing
• There’s a political will to move towards a circular economy
• A boarder group of stakeholders at the hospitals needs to be involved in energy efficiency now that the hospitals are moving from easier solutions to more complex.
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The Nordic Conference on Sustainable Healthcare 2018 – Nordic insights for greener healthcare

Saint-Gobain Ecophon develops, manufactures and markets acoustic products and systems that contribute to a good working environment by enhancing peoples’ wellbeing and performance. Our promise »A sound effect on people« is the core backbone of everything we do.

We prioritize healthcare environments as one of our main focus areas and for many years we have been involved with research that tries to answer questions about how we are affected by sound and acoustics in healthcare:

Can we heal faster if we sleep better? Does less noise mean less medication? Can a good sound environment increase patient safety?

The answer to all of these questions is - yes. Many studies have placed attention on how noise affects care, and they've all come to the same conclusion: noise affects the quality of care. Or in other words, a good sound environment has many positive effects in healthcare environments.

It is quite astonishing how much benefits an acoustic solution can contribute to. And in addition to all the human benefits, there are also many benefits when it comes to saving time and money.

Södra Älvsborg Hospital (SÄS) is a county hospital in Västra Götaland Region and provides specialized health care for some 295 000 inhabitants in the city of Borås and its surrounding municipalities. Södra Älvsborg Hospital has a wide span of operations. Apart from providing high quality health care within all specialties, including accident and emergency care, the hospital also has a research department and provides training for nurses and doctors. The hospital has some 4000 employees where the majority work at SÄS Borås. Some of the operations are based at a smaller hospital SÄS Skene in the municipality of Mark. The hospital also has several outpatient clinics offering psychiatric and paediatric care.