Radiology’s biggest carbon savings could come from efficient handling of imaging data

The NHS accounts for around four per cent of England’s total carbon footprint, and CT and MRI scanners are among the most energy-intensive devices in the hospital estate. However, some of imaging’s most stubborn emissions are not generated by a scanner, according to Rosenfield Health. “Every journey a trainee makes between trust sites to reach radiology teaching files, every duplicated download and every case manually exported, anonymised and re-uploaded across disconnected systems carries a cost in energy, clinical time and carbon.”

Sustainable workflow design could include structured regional archives that replace repeated travel with a login, says Rosenfield, or at-source anonymisation that removes redundant data movement. Vendor-neutral integration can extend the life of existing healthcare PACS solutions rather than wholesale replacement. “Manual, fragmented processes cannot deliver these consistently, because time pressure forces workarounds and workarounds create waste,” the company says.

Departments can begin with a three-part audit. First, counting the journeys staff make purely to access educational or governance material. Second, mapping where studies are duplicated or manually reprocessed between systems. Third, asking whether existing infrastructure could be extended rather than replaced. “Most departments will find that the greenest journey, download or duplicate is the one that never needs to happen.”

This thinking underpins Rosenfield Health’s iCode platform. By anonymising patient data at source through iCode TCE and giving entire regions remote access to shared teaching archives via iCode Teaching Files, Rosenfield helps NHS departments cut travel, duplication and data waste, demonstrating that efficiency and sustainability are linked.

Read this report on page 10 of the August 2026 issue of RAD Magazine.