From Smart Healthcare to ESG Sustainability in Action

NCKUH Hosts the “2026 Sustainability Practices and Energy-Saving & Carbon-Reduction Innovation Competition”

Advancing the Net-Zero Transition through Digital Empowerment and Green Healthcare

Amid the global movement toward net-zero carbon emissions and green sustainability, National Cheng Kung University Hospital (NCKUH) is taking a leading role by holding the “2026 Sustainability Practices and Energy-Saving & Carbon-Reduction Innovation Competition Presentation” on April 27. Through innovative proposals and achievement showcases by cross-departmental teams, the event demonstrates the hospital’s concrete actions and outstanding achievements in advancing environmental sustainability and the net-zero transition. The competition brings together diverse teams from clinical, administrative, and logistics units, focusing on energy conservation and carbon reduction, digital transformation, circular resource use, and low-carbon governance. Through innovative thinking, participants address sustainability challenges and demonstrate NCKUH’s commitment to integrating sustainability and ESG principles into healthcare governance and operational management.

The competition features a wide range of innovative initiatives, including smart green hospital practices, paperless process optimization, carbon reduction through digital management, AI-enabled automation, and circular reuse. These initiatives not only demonstrate tangible achievements in energy conservation and carbon reduction, but also highlight employees’ ability to identify sustainability value in their daily work and transform creative ideas into concrete outcomes. Examples include using digital tools to reduce paper use and administrative resource consumption, optimizing workflows to improve resource efficiency, and introducing smart technologies to advance low-carbon governance. Together, these efforts demonstrate NCKUH’s achievements in driving sustainability through innovation and putting ESG principles into practice.

NCKUH established its Sustainability Development Committee in 2024 and has since actively promoted ESG implementation and the net-zero transition. Superintendent Ching-Wei Lee encourages employees to transform innovative thinking into tangible impact. With more than NT$100,000 in prize money offered in this competition, creative exchange, peer learning, and experience sharing among teams are expected to facilitate the replication and wider adoption of sustainability initiatives while deepening a hospital-wide net-zero culture. Deputy Superintendent Chih-Hao Lin stated that the progression from a proposal competition that expands initiatives “from individual points to broader impact” to practical outcomes that move “from ideas to implementation” reflects NCKUH’s continued advancement of ESG governance and sustainable healthcare through institutionalization, innovation, and organization-wide participation. Sustainability is therefore not merely an environmental issue, but also an important expression of governance resilience and social responsibility within healthcare institutions.

NCKUH actively aligns with Taiwan’s national net-zero policy and has incorporated ESG into its core development strategies. Through a diverse range of initiatives—including energy management, green procurement, digital transformation, and employee engagement—the hospital continues to build upon its sustainability achievements. This competition further transforms sustainability principles into collective action across the hospital, demonstrating the forward-looking approach of an academic medical center in advancing low-carbon healthcare, smart governance, and social responsibility. NCKUH will continue to build a model of healthcare that integrates resilience, intelligence, and sustainability.