MCF Classifier - measuring, benchmarking, and optimising the carbon footprint of medicines

 

Haroon Taylor, Nazneen Rahman 

YewMaker

 

Introduction

• Medicines account for 25% of NHS greenhouse gas emissions. 

• Product-level medicine carbon footprint data is limited, hindering efforts to reduce emissions related to medicines. 

• To address this, we have created Medicine Carbon Footprint (MCF) Classifier, a suite of applications to measure, classify, benchmark, and visualise medicine carbon footprints 1.

 

MCF Classifier includes five components:

MCF Method - An automated pipeline to calculate carbon emissions per dose for small molecule medicines in gCO2e.

MCF Ratings - A RAG-style, log-based system that classifies carbon emissions per dose into one of four emission categories: LOW, MEDIUM, HIGH, VERY HIGH.

MCF Products - Medicine products for which MCF Method is used to calculate the gCO2e per dose and MCF Ratings have been applied.

MCF Warehouse - A cloud store of all input and calculated data, optimised for rapid analytics across all medicines and ratings.

MCF Formulary - A searchable web-application to visualise MCF Ratings by therapeutic indication.

 

• We leveraged green chemistry metrics to build an automated pipeline, called MCF Method 2-5.

• We used MCF Method to calculate standardised emissions per dose for 2214 medicines. 

• We stratified the emissions per dose into four categories called MCF Ratings following a log10 scale. The rating categories are LOW (<10gCO2e per dose), MEDIUM (≥10-100), HIGH (≥100-1000), VERY HIGH (≥1000).

• The distribution of 2214 products by MCF Ratings is shown in Fig 1. 

 

MCF Formulary

• We built MCF Formulary, an interactive web application, to provide a user-friendly and practical interface for people to explore MCF Ratings. 

• MCF Formulary shows the MCF Rating of the searched medicine and the ratings of other medicines used in similar therapeutic indications, as defined by the BNF.

• For each medicine, the most prescribed product is shown by default. Ratings of other products for that medicine are available as a dropdown.

 

How we are using MCF Classifier 

We have used MCF Classifier to:

• Build MCF Formulary.

• Perform a comprehensive landscaping analysis of medicine carbon footprints. 

• Analyse the distribution of gCO2e per dose by therapeutic indication.

• Calculate the product attributable emissions for NHS primary and secondary care prescriptions.

• Identify priority medicines and therapeutic areas for carbon reduction interventions.

• Generate benchmarking medicine emission reports for NHS primary and secondary care organisations.

 

To access MCF Formulary email: mcf@yewmaker.com

 

Conclusions

• To reach net zero the NHS must optimise medicines use to reduce the 25% of emissions related to medicines.

• MCF Classifier provides standardised, product-level, per dose medicine emissions ratings for >2000 medicines, searchable in MCF Formulary. 

• These applications can help carbon-informed medicines prescription and prioritisation of carbon-reduction interventions. 

 

We are grateful for support from SBRI Healthcare.

 

References

1. Taylor HM et al. A landscape analysis of medicine carbon footprints identifies antibiotics as a promising target for emission reduction interventions (submitted).

2. Jimenez-Gonzalez C et al. Using the Right Green Yardstick: Why Process Mass Intensity Is Used in the Pharmaceutical Industry To Drive More Sustainable Processes. Org Process Res Dev. 2011 Jul 15;15(4):912–7.

3. Sherer EC et al. Driving Aspirational Process Mass Intensity Using Simple Structure-Based Prediction. Org Process Res Dev. 2022 May 20;26(5):1405–10.

4. Ertl P & Schuffenhauer A. Estimation of synthetic accessibility score of drug-like molecules based on molecular complexity and fragment contributions. J Cheminformatics. 2009 Jun 10;1(1):8.

5. Sheridan RP et al. Modeling a Crowdsourced Definition of Molecular Complexity. J Chem Inf Model. 2014 Jun 23;54(6):1604–16.