These growing patient volumes are unfolding on two timelines: a long-term increase driven by progressive climate impacts, and a short-term surge triggered by extreme weather events and high heat. 

Being ready to support sudden patient spikes isn’t a new challenge but doing so amid rising baseline pressures from climate change is fast becoming the new normal.

Programmes like the NUHS's deployment of holomedicine are designed to ease these pressures. Holomedicine uses augmented and virtual reality to support medical practice and surgery, enabling more efficient and precise care.

In a recent development, NUHS has deployed Robot Nurse Companion, a companion robot that handles routine, repetitive tasks like temperature checks and medicine dispensing. This frees up healthcare workers to focus on more demanding responsibilities. Robot Nurse Companion operates on a secure, dedicated 5G network slice to ensure uninterrupted connectivity.

The potential impact of this tool is far-reaching by streamlining care under pressure, it could help maintain quality outcomes even during climate-driven patient surges. It could also support more efficient surgical planning and improve patient safety, enabling clinicians to manage greater volumes of patients without compromising care.²

Beyond rising patient volumes, climate change is also making healthcare access more difficult. Extreme weather events - such as floods or wildfires - regularly disrupt critical infrastructure, turning patient access into a climate resilience challenge. 

In sparsely populated countries like Australia and Canada, healthcare must increasingly be delivered remotely. During Australia's devastating 2019 bushfires, for example, telehealth services became a lifeline for remote communities cut off from local clinics and major hospitals.³

Now, IoT devices and edge-enabled wearables are becoming the next line of defence. Smartwatches and other simple wearables can track vital signs like heart rate, oxygen saturation and sleep quality, giving clinicians insight into both ongoing and acute health conditions. This data helps identify which patients need urgent care, even when they can't reach a hospital.

5G network allows this data to be processed locally, enabling real-time triage when seconds count and central systems may be compromised. By prioritising only relevant data, these systems reduce bandwidth strain and empower emergency responders to act faster and more effectively during climate crises.⁴

The healthcare sector generates a significant volume of unavoidable waste due to sterile, single-use items. It also consumes high levels of energy to operate large medical machines and climate-controlled facilities.

As climate impacts increase energy volatility and operational risk, digitalisation has become a dual-purpose tool, building both sustainability and system resilience. Virtualisation, in particular, is reducing hardware reliance, lowering costs, and enabling more flexible, responsive healthcare delivery.⁵

Software Defined Networking (SDN) plays a critical role. By managing network traffic through software rather than hardware, SDN offers greater agility, allowing healthcare providers to scale technologies without overloading the network or introducing lag. 

Similarly, Software-Defined Wide Area Networks (SD-WAN) benefit large healthcare systems with multiple locations, such as the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). With centralised visibility into bandwidth usage and performance, operators can allocate resources in real time and respond swiftly to localised surges.

These virtualised infrastructures give healthcare providers the agility to handle climate-driven spikes in patient volume, while reducing their environmental footprint.

The response from healthcare executives to tech-enabled change has been overwhelmingly positive - 97% report that continuous advances in technology are becoming more reliable than economic, political or social trends in planning for the future.⁶

For healthcare providers, integrating technologies like 5G, SDN and SD-WAN builds not just capability, but capacity, creating a resilient, adaptive ecosystem that protects care delivery as climate pressures intensify.

In an era of rising disruption, tech-enabled healthcare isn't just innovation - it's infrastructure.

Ready for tech-enabled sustainable change?