ESTRO 2025 - Abstract Book

S2217

Interdisciplinary – Global health

ESTRO 2025

Conclusion: Increasing demand of data storage is forcing RT departments to continually increase storage and energy consumption associated with this. Storing and accessing this data costs significant amount of carbon footprint now but if no intervention is planned it will be greater every year. Added to this, RT departments are required to retain patient data for thirty years in UK. If this dark data is not harvested, then the policy makers need to think about how much and long we should be retaining data for? A multicentre study on this would help RT community to determine the impact both in terms of carbon footprint and dark data reduction.

Keywords: Sustainability, data storage, policy References: 1. Exploring the sustainability challenges facing digitalisation and internet data centres- Al Kez et al

2. Benefits and challenges of Big data in healthcare: an overview of the European initiatives _ R Pastorino et al

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Digital Poster Patient and staff travel and its carbon footprint: an international survey

Dimitri Vanmarcke 1 , Anthony Alexis 2 , Jude Blamire 3 , Fanny Borfiga 4 , Gregory Delpon 2 , Tomas Englund 5 , Maria Antonietta Gambarcorta 6 , Mark Hardy 7 , Carina Holmberg 8 , Sumeer Hussain 9 , Ahmed Ifthaker 10 , Stephanie Keehan 11,12 , Dan Kirby 3 , Odile Michel 4 , Eva Onjukka 8 , Geoff Scott 3 , Ana Luísa Soares 13 , Joe Stickley 14 , Amanda Tate 14 , Kari Tanderup 15,16 , Robert Chuter 17,18 1 Department of Radiotherapy, University Hospitals Leuven, Leuven, Belgium. 2 Department of Radiotherapy, Institut de cancérologie de l'Ouest, Saint-Herblain, France. 3 Department of Radiotherapy, Worcestershire Oncology Centre, Worcester, United Kingdom. 4 Department of Radiotherapy, Europe Hospitals, Brussels, Belgium. 5 Department of Radiotherapy, Länssjukhuset Ryhov, Jönköping, Sweden. 6 Department of Radiotherapy, Gemelli Hospitals, Rome, Italy. 7 Department of Radiotherapy, The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre, Liverpool, United Kingdom. 8 Department of Radiotherapy, Karolinska University Hospital, Solna, Sweden. 9 Department of Radiotherapy, Al Moosa Specialist Hospital, Al-Mubarraz, Saudi Arabia. 10 Department of Radiotherapy, Barts Health NHS Trust, London, United Kingdom. 11 Department of Radiotherapy, Genesis Care Frankston, Melbourne, Australia. 12 Department of Radiotherapy, Genesis Care St Vincent's Fitzroy Victoria, Melbourne, Australia. 13 Department of Radiotherapy, Instituto Português de Oncologia do Porto, Porto, Portugal. 14 Department of Radiotherapy, Nottingham University Hospitals, Nottingham, United Kingdom. 15 Department of Oncology, Aarhus University Hospital, Aarhus, Denmark. 16 Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark. 17 Department of Radiotherapy, The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester, United Kingdom. 18 Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom Purpose/Objective: Several studies have shown that transport is a large component of the carbon equivalent (CO 2 e) emissions of external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) [1–3]. This study aims to determine the amount of patient and staff travel in different centres over the world. Material/Methods: Spreadsheets were shared with participants of an ESTRO webinar in March 2023 asking them to fill in information relevant to estimating the carbon footprint of these centres including staff and patient travel. Staff travel information was used if there was a minimum 40% response rate. A distinction was made between centres located in ‘large’ and ‘small’ cities (> or ≤ 1 million inhabitants), and statistical tests were performed using the Mann-Whitney U test. Finally, we estimated the CO 2 e emissions of staff and patient travel [4]. Results: We received completed spreadsheets from 16 radiotherapy treatment centres. Of these spreadsheets, 13 were of sufficient quality to study patient travel and 12 for staff travel. In total, we used data from 14 different centres located across 8 countries.