Pistoia Alliance Launches Initiative to Assess Sustainability of Digital vs. Traditional Clinical Trial Approaches
New initiative will collect pharma and CRO data to refine industry carbon measurement of technologies like remote monitoring and eConsent, informing more sustainable trial design
Boston, 20th March 2025: The Pistoia Alliance, a global, not-for-profit alliance that advocates for greater collaboration in life sciences R&D, is launching the next phase of its project to measure and reduce the carbon footprint of clinical trials. The initiative will assess the environmental impact of digital trial delivery methods (eConsent, decentralized clinical trials (DCT)) and digital health solutions (devices, apps), compared to traditional, paper-based approaches. By closing a critical gap in the understanding of whether digital technologies are more sustainable, the project will establish a standardized methodology for evaluating the use of digital tools in clinical trials. To further support this effort, the Alliance is also launching a new whitepaper that explores the broader sustainability challenges in pharmaceutical R&D and the need for better measurement frameworks to drive meaningful change.
“The life sciences industry is under increasing pressure to reduce its environmental impact, and clinical trials are a significant contributor to its carbon footprint. As CROs and sponsors embrace digital technologies, it is critical to understand whether these innovations are genuinely more sustainable than traditional methods,” explains Thierry Escudier, Portfolio Lead at the Pistoia Alliance. “Right now, data gaps and a lack of standardized methodologies make it difficult to measure the true environmental impact of digital tools in trials. With regulatory bodies, investors, and healthcare stakeholders demanding greater transparency and sustainability, now is the time to establish clear metrics that provide the insights needed to integrate sustainability-by-design into future clinical trials.”
The healthcare sector contributes approximately 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Clinical trials are a significant part of this, producing approximately 100 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, equivalent to the annual carbon footprint of Belgium. These emissions stem from all activities performed to run clinical trials at pharmaceutical companies’ facilities and hospital sites. Many of these factors are accounted for by the new industry-standard Clinical Trial Carbon Calculator, which the Alliance also contributed to and was launched in February by the Sustainable Healthcare Coalition and the industry Low Carbon Clinical Trials (iLCCT) community. However, data on the environmental impact of digital tools remains limited.
The Pistoia Alliance’s new initiative will collect real-world data from pharmaceutical companies, CROs, and other stakeholders to develop a standardized methodology for evaluating digital trial technologies, including software and hardware – such as the provisioning of smartphones and tablets for electronic patient-reported outcomes. This environmental impact data will be used to update the database currently powering the Carbon Calculator, so ClinOps teams and others who contribute to clinical trial design will be able to accurately compare digital versus non-digital trial approaches. This will allow clinical leaders to make more informed decisions when designing clinical trials, including reducing emissions while maintaining trial efficiency and quality.
“Collaboration is essential to tackling the sustainability challenges facing pharmaceutical R&D, and the Pistoia Alliance is uniquely positioned to lead this effort. We have a successful and long history of developing frameworks that are multidisciplinary, global, and industry-wide,” comments Dr Becky Upton, President of the Pistoia Alliance. “By working collaboratively, we can establish a standardized approach to comparing the environmental impact of digital technologies in trials against traditional approaches, while ensuring that future innovations support both efficiency and sustainability. To make this initiative a success, we are calling on organizations across the clinical research ecosystem to contribute their expertise, case studies, and funding.”
For further information and to get involved in the Pistoia Alliance’s work evaluating the environmental impact of clinical trials visit https://www.pistoiaalliance.org/project/clinical-trial-environmental-impact/
