Green Digital Health Tool

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How to use this site

This tool shows you the questions that will need to be answered to implement and maintain a sustainable Digital Health System. You probably won't be able to answer all the questions by yourself, so identify the people that have the knowledge and skills on the different areas covered by this tool and ask them the questions. They might be people in other departments or even some of the suppliers used by your organisation.

Beside the questions you will sometimes see an icon. Clicking on them will provide extra information. Below is a brief explanation of what each icon means:

Why should you ask this questionWhy should you ask this question?


Extra information and resourcesRead more about this subject


ideas that you could trySuggest actions to be taken next

Cloud Hosting

ideas that you could try If you are not able to answer these questions yourself, ask your potential suppliers the questions below and assess their answers using the explanatory information provided, before deciding whether to use them.

For context you may want to refer back to this short learning module from the Green Software Foundation, or this discussion of grid aware software These resources provide information about the whole ecosystem around green software, including data centres and the energy grid.

In addition the Compass tool, which is designed primarily for technicians in the data centre industry, gives guidance on choosing options for procurement, refurbishment and disposal of servers that are best aligned with the circular economy.

Why should you ask this question Temporal shifting means making best use of periods when renewables are powering the grid - so maximizing the data processing undertaken during these times.

Spatial shifting means allowing your processing to run at a data centre in a different location when the energy supply to the primary data centre is low in renewables.

Clearly the degree to which you can fine-tune a Digital Health system may be limited – data processing to provide monitoring, for example, may need to be happening constantly. But there may be considerable flexibility around other processing, such as reporting and data maintenance tasks.

Why should you ask this question Inefficient cooling systems in data centres can significantly increase energy and water consumption, and if excessive heat builds up, this can shorten the lifespan of data centre hardware.

Why should you ask this question A PUE of 1 is the ideal as it would indicate that all the power supplied to a data centre was used for the computing equipment - so no energy was necessary for things like lighting or cooling.

A CUE of 0 is ideal as it would indicate that the data centre operated entirely on carbon free energy sources.

A WUE of 0 is ideal as it would indicate that the data centre consumed no water whilst providing its data storage and processing services.

Many other useful data centre sustainability metrics are available.

Why should you ask this question The proliferation, scale, and rate of technological evolution and environmental impacts of data centres are making this an increasingly important question.

Why should you ask this question The Green Web Foundation maintains a verified list and provides this information for data centre operators and web hosting providers who want to get verified.

Why should you ask this question Resource pooling in a data centre employs economies of scale to minimise energy use across customers.