Sustainable Surgery Program
Understanding the surgical carbon footprint through a scalable framework
Project overview
The project culminated in the design and implementation of a comprehensive measurement framework to establish a carbon footprint baseline for surgical procedures, piloted through scheduled laparoscopic cholecystectomy procedures performed during 2023.
Organization
Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá | Innovation Team + Department of Surgery + Department of Sustainability
Role
Lead Strategic and Innovation Designer + Project Manager
Domain: Sustainability | Design Research | Innovation | Project Management
Healthcare systems are highly resource-intensive, creating a paradox where caring for people can also harm the environment. By grounding sustainability in data, the initiative enabled cross-functional alignment and fostered a shared culture of responsibility.
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“We cannot save lives through the front door and affect the life of the planet through the back door” - CEO Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá
Location
Bogotá, Colombia
Duration
1 year
Directed and designed a workshop with surgical teams, environmental team, innovation team and business stakeholders.
Project impact
Geneva Sustainability Centre awarded our institution with the Bronze distinction for Hospital Sustainability Acceleration in 2025.
Beyond institutional impact, the project gained international recognition of the Geneva Sustainability Centre, acknowledging the advancement of sustainable surgery practices that promote environmental accountability within clinical care.
Institutional presentation for different stakeholders and board members about prototyping results
My role
I led the project as Lead Strategic and Innovation Designer and Project Manager, guiding the initiative from early exploration to strategic definition.
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Connected diverse domains—including clinical practice, environmental sustainability, healthcare operations, and business strategy—into a cohesive and actionable framework.
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Facilitated collaboration across surgical teams, sustainability management, innovation leaders, and external healthcare organizations, learning from existing efforts while aligning stakeholders around shared goals.
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Structured the measurement and prioritization methodology, translating complex qualitative and quantitative inputs into strategic insights. This role required stepping beyond traditional design boundaries, leading interdisciplinary teams through uncertainty, and using design as a tool for systems-level transformation.
Design intent
Design an evidence-based methodology to measure and understand the carbon footprint of surgical care, translating sustainability intentions into concrete, actionable data.
Enable cross-disciplinary collaboration across the surgical ecosystem (+6 teams), by using design as a connective practice that aligns diverse priorities, languages, and responsibilities.
Field trips to the OR to map out surgical packages strategy
Support the development of a sustainability culture, fostering shared ownership, informed decision-making, and long-term accountability across environmental, social, and financial dimensions.
Create a scalable and adaptable framework that can be replicated across other surgical procedures and extended to additional hospital services.
Co-creation workshop with surgical and environmental team
Project outcome
The results revealed that the carbon footprint of a single laparoscopic cholecystectomy ranged between 111.47 and 185.85 kgCOâ‚‚eq, with variability driven by clinical practices, patient complexity, and procedure duration.
This highlighted that meaningful reduction could not be achieved through isolated actions alone, but required coordinated interventions across multiple dimensions of the system. Ultimately, the project demonstrated that sustainability in healthcare must be driven by action, measurement, and a shared culture, embedding responsibility across clinical, operational, and administrative teams.
Prototyping of the framework in real time procedures with the surgical and environmental team
Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, the team mapped the full surgical experience—before, during, and after the procedure—conducting observations inside operating rooms and engaging directly with surgeons, nurses, pharmacists, sterilization teams, environmental management, and administrative staff. This phase was essential to surface real-world practices, constraints, and opportunities for intervention across the surgical ecosystem.
Recommendations from the Geneva Sustainability Centre’s Sustainability Accelerator Tool were incorporated, across 5 key fronts:
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Medication use
Anesthesia gases
Sterilization processes
Energy consumption
Disposable surgical supplies
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Feasibility
Impact
Scalability
A prioritization framework based on impact, feasibility, and scalability guided implementation, alongside a flexible methodology designed to fill data gaps and enable replication across healthcare systems.