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KitNewCare General Assembly
The KitNewCare (KNC) General Assembly, held in Bucharest on 14 –15 April 2026, brought together clinicians, work package leads, researchers, patient group representatives and industry partners at the halfway point of this Horizon Europe funded project, tasked with reducing the emissions of kidney care by 40%. As KNC enters its final two years, the focus has shifted toward from planning to implementation, coordinating progress across sites, sharing emerging findings, and agreeing priorities for the year ahead.
“It is energising to get together with our partners from across Europe, to catch up with all the research underway and explore how our work can be brought together. We came away with lots of ideas and plans for increasing our impact on sustainable kidney care!”
-Dr Frances Mortimer, CSH Medical Director
The Centre for Sustainable Healthcare was represented by five delegates across three core work packages; Organisational and workflow optimisation (WP3) & Sustainable best practice guidance and tools (WP5), and Capacity building (WP6). For both WP3 & WP5, CSH is the lead organisation from a consortium of 19, spanning over 8 countries and 7 languages.
CSH led the opening visioning session, which played a key role in bringing together insights from four clinical pilot sites alongside ongoing research and activities by the wider consortium. This session reinforced the shared understanding of how different components of this ambitious project connect. It enabled those working in academic settings to better understand the realities of implementation at clinical sites, while clinicians gained greater visibility of how research outputs can inform and accelerate optimisation efforts, with opportunities to influence the direction of future research in order to have the most impact. Contributions from industry partners also ensured that discussions considered how care is delivered in practice, and patient group representatives ensured that all optimisations to clinical pathways had a patient-centred approach.
Key topics included emerging technology, the role of prevention and screening, where the focus for policy-makers should be, inclusion of patient insights, and how to ensure that optimisations can spread to other kidney centres, other departments, and other countries.
Engagement across the two days was consistently high. A notable highlight was the demonstration of the forthcoming benchmarking tool, which will support clinical sites to monitor and manage their environmental impact, providing a standardised and practical mechanism to track progress and drive improvement.
The General Assembly also recognised the position of KNC within a broader international movement toward more sustainable kidney care. Initiatives such as International Society of Nephrology’s Green-K programme, the KDIGO “sustainability insights” conference, the UK Kidney Association’s Sustainable Kidney Care Toolkit and Benchmarking Survey, and international efforts such as CASCADES Sustainable Kidney Care Playbook, and the ANZSN Green Nephrology Action Team all point to a growing global consensus. We recognise that a collaborative effort is the only way we can achieve such ambitious targets.
By monitoring the environmental, social, financial and health outcomes, with benchmarking against national and European averages and best practice, KitNewCare takes a holistic approach to one of the most resource intensive care pathways within healthcare. The collaborative, multi-stakeholder approach can support the transition to more sustainable kidney care across Europe.
The Bucharest meeting marked an important step in that journey, strengthening alignment across partners and setting the direction for the next phase of delivery. It was inspiring to see how a relatively small group of people can organise and drive system wide change on an international scale.
Author: Dr Furat Al-Murani, Clinical Delivery Lead: Capacity Building in Sustainable Kidney Care
