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Cutting waste is good business According to Vibhas Deshpande, vice president of sustainability innovation and strategic research at Siemens Healthineers North America, reducing idle time in between patients can additionally reduce energy consumption.
“Even during their use time, there are ways one can reduce energy, but that will be the subject of further research,” he told HCB News.
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Being mindful of MR scanner modes doesn’t just reduce carbon emissions. The researchers found that embracing “off mode” could result in annual savings of $1,717 to $2,943 per year for a single machine. If the machine can be put into “power save” mode, or simulate that mode, there’s an additional $1,226 to $1,594 to be saved annually per scanner.
“If all outpatient MR scanners in the U.S. implemented a ‘power save’ mode instead of an ‘off mode’ for 12 hours overnight, it would save enough energy to power 6,889 homes a year in the U.S,” said Woolen.
Environmental change is up to all of us Prior research on energy usage in the radiology department played a role in UCSF focusing on reducing carbon emissions in the radiology department. In 2020, a study in Radiology showed that 33% of MR energy consumption was attributed to the system-off state, owing to the need for constant helium cooling and coldhead operation.
Although Woolen and his team did not face resistance from colleagues when tinkering with scanner modes, there were aspects of the research that caused some uneasiness.
“There is a power cycling time, meaning there is a time for the machine to power down and power back up,” he said. “This can range anywhere from five to 20 minutes, so one concern is that if you turn off the machine it might not be available to use immediately.”
Getting everyone on the same page was critical. For their study, the team engaged with electrical engineers, facilities engineers at the hospital, sustainability experts, as well as vendor experts from Siemens Healthineers and the energy experts from Siemens.
“In general, coordinating environmental change in a healthcare system takes a system's leadership approach,” said Woolen. “Radiologists may be used to working with individuals in their department or one other specialty like on a clinical study, but particularly for environmental projects, usually you have to engage a lot of individuals from different disciplines.”
For UCSF, the MR energy study is the beginning of an initiative to reduce power consumption in the radiology department. “We have plans to look at further ways to become more energy efficient and reduce our waste, but we're still in the beginning stages of those,” said Woolen.
