The carbon footprint created by healthcare is enormous. Estimates are reported as high as 10% of the entire carbon footprint of the United States and 25% of the entire carbon footprint of the United Kingdom. There is urgent need to reduce this. Innovations in healthcare should consider the effects on the carbon footprint and need to be directed toward its reduction. FormDrop seeks to sustain the planet by reducing the carbon footprint of healthcare and its consumption of scarce resources:

• Its digital health platform facilitates the transition of health away from physical health modalities toward digital health modalities. This eliminates the carbon produced from transporting physical bodies to the places where physical health modalities are performed, and the carbon produced from constructing and operating the physical buildings where physical health modalities are performed.

• Filling forms with FormDrop eliminates the consumption of the paper the forms are printed on along with the carbon emissions associated with producing the paper.

• The biological content for its blood testing is produced in plant expression vectors rather than the mammalian expression vectors typically employed in blood testing. While mammalian cell expression vectors pollute the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, plant cell expression vectors remove carbon dioxide. Tobacco plant expression vectors are preferred since transgenesis of tobacco is well known and well developed. Its use supports transitioning of tobacco farming from health destroying products to health supporting products while reducing production cost.

• A widely held orthodoxy of bioanalytical chemistry is the use of consumable labware. This results in lots of cost, waste and carbon emissions. Utilizing reusable labware with plasma or ozone ultra-cleaning reduces cost. Plasma and ozone ultra-cleaning is widely utilized in cleanroom production environments to remove all traces of organic matter from clean surfaces. As such, ultra-cleaned surfaces are probably cleaner than the orthodox single use surfaces. Further, the plasma and ozone ultra-cleaning reduces organic matter compounds like O₂ and H₂O; non-toxic gases that are prevalent in the atmosphere—this enhances sustainability.

• It uses much smaller volume blood samples. This reduces the hazardous blood material disposal and requires less solvent consumption and less carbon emissions associated with solvent production. 

The importance of this carbon reducing architecture is magnified as it scales.  Since FormDrop is designed to scale to the masses, it will make important and significant contributions to the sustainability of the planet.