What is GHG

Healthcare is a rapidly growing domain covering wide areas of business activities including those in hospitals, pharmacies, insurance, health administration and related supporting services. In an environmentally conscious world, healthcare is being increasingly compared with other industries in terms of the carbon footprint generation. This chapter starts with a broad overview of the healthcare industry from an environmental perspective and then discusses the stakeholders involved, use of ICT in healthcare, and the relative size of the carbon footprint generated in the sector. The emphasis in this chapter is to bring to the fore the elements in healthcare sector that affect the environment and the potential application of Green ICT to address.