Sustainability of Telemedicine: A Comparative Analysis with In-Person Visitation

Telemedicine is often regarded as a sustainable alternative to in-person consultations, primarily due to the reduction in patient travel. However, this is only a partial perspective, as it overlooks other sources of environmental impact, such as energy consumption from devices, data transmission, and digital infrastructures. This study introduces a method to compare the environmental impact of remote and traditional consultations in telemonitoring scenarios. The proposed method integrates Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) principles with the Guide to the Expression of Uncertainty in Measurement (GUM) and Monte Carlo simulations, in order to provide probability distributions of the impact. This approach differs from traditional ones, which typically report sustainability estimations as single-point values. The case study shows that the sustainability of medical consultations is influenced by variables such as travel distance and the duration of the visit. The findings indicate that, under specific circumstances, either remote or in-person consultations may represent the more sustainable option. Consequently, telemedicine should not be regarded as intrinsically more sustainable, but rather as context-dependent.