MCF Classifier wins NHS funding

YewMaker has been awarded pilot funding to create MCF Classifier – a user-friendly tool that provides information on the carbon footprint of medicines to support low-carbon decision-making in medicines procurement, optimisation, and prescription.

Medicines account for 25% of all NHS emissions. Currently, spend on medicines is used to estimate these emissions, because we have not had ways to measure them more directly.

We urgently need better metrics to allow the decisions about the medicines we buy and prescribe to be ‘carbon-informed’, for example to give doctors the knowledge to prescribe a medicine with a lower carbon footprint, if clinically appropriate.

MCF Classifier

MCF Classifier adapts ‘green by design’ metrics, validated by the pharmaceutical sector, integrated with the formulary used by doctors and pharmacists to decide which medicine to prescribe, and presents the data in a practical ‘colour-coded’ framework.

MCF Classifier was one of ten innovations awarded funding in the SBRI Healthcare programme in partnership with the Greener NHS to support delivery of a Net Zero NHS

We hope MCF Classifier will drive transparency and yield opportunities to incentivise greener production and empower carbon-informed medicine choices.

Posted 29/01/22

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