Telemedicine and the environment: life cycle environmental emissions from in-person and virtual clinic visits.

Concern over climate change is growing in the healthcare space, and telemedicine has been rapidly expanding since the start of the COVID19 pandemic. Understanding the various sources of environmental emissions from clinic visits-both virtual and in-person-will help create a more sustainable healthcare system. This study uses a Life Cycle Assessment with retrospective clinical data from Stanford Health Care (SHC) in 2019-2021 to determine the environmental emissions associated with in-person and virtual clinic visits.