Welcome to the second edition of the KitNewCare Newsletter, and thank you for the warm response to our first issue.

In the first edition we promised a closer look at the project's scientific output and at what we planned in Malmö. This issue delivers on both. Since late August we have been publishing a news piece every week on the papers, datasets and deliverables that KitNewCare has placed in its open Zenodo community, and in this edition we bring the highlights together in one place. We also report back from the 8th Nordic Conference on Sustainable Healthcare in Malmö, where KitNewCare and its two sister projects compared notes in public, and we look ahead to two upcoming Kidney Care SusNet webinars.

A new batch of scientific papers and news releases will follow in the third edition.

KitNewCare Team

KitNewCare is a proud contributor to the Kidney Care Sustainability Network (Kidney Care SusNet), run by the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare.

Two webinars are scheduled over the coming weeks, all online and free to join:

Speaker: Alastair Tallis – Project Manager, Midlands Renal Operational Delivery Network (Midlands Kidney Network)

Description: How a regional network moved nine kidney units towards more sustainable care, using the switch from single-use to reusable tourniquets as a worked example of change that saves carbon, money and clinical time, including candid lessons on infection prevention and control.

Speaker: Prof. Shakoor Hajat – Professor of Global Environmental Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Description: The association between ambient heat and acute kidney injury risk, the factors that modify it, and what it means for preventing heat-related AKI.

In the first edition we explained that KitNewCare is uploading all of its outputs to a dedicated Zenodo community, so that detail, data and citations live in one place. Since then, each week has brought a news piece on a group of related outputs. Here is the round-up:

Explore everything in one place: follow the KitNewCare Zenodo community for papers, datasets and project deliverables as they go live.

More to come in the third edition.

8th Nordic Conference on Sustainable Healthcare  – 30 September and 1 October 2026

Two days in Malmö: one to compare notes with sister projects, and one to share KitNewCare's approach with the wider sustainable healthcare community.

Horizon Europe side event (30 September). KitNewCare, NetZeroAICT and CARING NATURE came together in Malmö for a joint session, “From Evidence to Action: Advancing Sustainable Healthcare through Measurement, Digital Innovation and Implementation”, hosted by the Nordic Center for Sustainable Healthcare. The projects also met with Martin Uriarte-Asteinza, Policy Officer for Climate Change and Health at the European Commission. Contributors included John Kellas and Farheen Yameen (NetZeroAICT) and Ioannis Vyrides and Helinä Melkas (CARING NATURE), alongside the KitNewCare team.

The day was structured around three areas: measurement, digital innovation and implementation. The discussion deliberately focused on shared learning across the three projects rather than separate project updates. Participants looked at what evidence healthcare organisations actually need to make sustainability decisions, when digital and AI-enabled changes genuinely improve sustainability, and what determines whether successful interventions move beyond pilots into routine practice and wider scale.

A strong common message: evidence alone is not enough. Across the projects, data availability, staff capacity, workflow, procurement, infrastructure, regulation, management support and stakeholder engagement all affect whether change can actually be implemented.

8th Nordic Conference on Sustainable Healthcare (1 October). Project coordinator Prof Brett Duane (Trinity College Dublin) spoke on measuring health, cost and carbon in Parallel Session 1a (Reducing), alongside speakers from the Danish Technological Institute and BD. The Centre for Sustainable Healthcare, an associated partner in KitNewCare, was also represented at the conference.

8th Nordic Conference on Sustainable Healthcare (1 October). Project coordinator Prof Brett Duane (Trinity College Dublin) spoke on measuring health, cost and carbon in Parallel Session 1a (Reducing), alongside speakers from the Danish Technological Institute and BD. The Centre for Sustainable Healthcare, an associated partner in KitNewCare, was also represented at the conference.

Looking to build sustainability skills within your own team? The KitNewCare Sustainable Kidney Care Course, developed with the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare, is completely free and available in four languages: English, Polish, Spanish, and Italian (Dutch is coming soon). Over six hours of interactive online learning, split into manageable sections, cover key concepts, theories and practical case studies on sustainability in kidney care.

The course helps nephrology professionals understand the environmental risks facing health systems, recognise kidney care's own contribution to that crisis, and apply sustainability principles in practice, from prevention strategies to reducing the environmental impact of dialysis and planning a sustainability project at your own workplace.