How a healthcare consultancy improved its data quality by transitioning from high-level financial proxies to activity-based data
About Costello Medical
Costello Medical is a global healthcare consultancy providing scientific support in the analysis, interpretation and communication of clinical and health economic data. Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Cambridge, the company certified as a B Corp in 2022, cementing its commitment to balancing purpose and profit.
Working across market access, medical communications, health economics, and health technology assessment, its client base is drawn from pharmaceutical and medical device companies, with a portfolio of public sector work. Following this certification, actively managing and reducing its environmental impact has become a core priority across all operations.
Sophie Pearson
External Engagement Manager
Costello Medical
"As a scientific organisation, we require rigorous, evidence-based data. Previously, manual carbon accounting took our team weeks. Partnering with Furthr has been a game-changer, their tailored data automation and responsive support completely eliminated our operational burden, giving us time back to focus on strategic carbon reduction work"
4
Cloud suppliers sharing real usage data instead of estimates
90%
Less time on carbon accounting, from weeks to 1.5 days
Moved from financial spend proxies to activity data for a more accurate footprint
17,000
Food items from receipts converted to activity data
Overview
Costello Medical's clients were increasingly setting ambitious carbon reduction goals and seeking greater transparency across their supply chains. This created a growing need for robust emissions data, enabling Costello Medical to evidence its environmental performance and support its clients' sustainability objectives.
As an organisation rooted in high quality scientific data, Costello Medical understood how paramount it was to base its footprint on activity data. To do so, they partnered with Furthr, combining automated carbon management tools with an embedded sustainability team to handle complex data processing.
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A methodological gap: Establish a comprehensive approach to measure its carbon footprint, driven by a critical need for data improvement that required transitioning from spend-based to activity-based data to underpin a science-based target.
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Overestimated footprint: Navigate an extensive supply chain where a historical reliance on spend-based proxies consistently overestimated their actual carbon footprint.
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Time-consuming systems: Upgrade an initial excel-based system that was time-consuming, leaving them dedicating significant time to cleansing and managing data manually.
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Fragmented data sources: Streamline deeply fragmented data saved across different formats, such as physical receipts and invoices, to gain deeper insights into how emissions were calculated.
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High-manual burden: Reduce the high manual effort in its historical processes by replacing weeks of manual data cleansing, line-by-line item matching, and variable estimation with automated data solutions.
Key challenges to address
Taking carbon management Furthr
Transitioning to activity-based carbon data to underpin Costello Medical’s Science-based Targets
Furthr supported Costello Medical in transitioning from financial proxies to activity-based data, establishing a robust carbon management programme to underpin their Science-based Targets.
Streamlining complex data without disrupting operations
Without disrupting Costello Medical's day-to-day operations, Furthr's experts implemented a tailored solution around their existing systems, streamlining fragmented data saved across a vast number of formats, units, and unstructured expense logs.
Furthr's data experts built a bespoke PDF extraction tool that automatically reads unstructured physical files, extracting products, weights, and quantities in hours to dramatically improve data quality. By combining this tailored automation with embedded expertise, Furthr delivered immediate improvements across Costello Medical's entire carbon management programme.
Delivering this level of precision meant gathering high volumes of data required a completely new operational approach altogether. To help Costello Medical's internal team outgrow their time-consuming Excel-based system, Furthr completely absorbed an operational workflow that had previously taken weeks.
Supply chain was a key part of this programme. Furthr's embedded sustainability team began by targeting high-emitting categories by spend, before conducting direct outreach to extract supplier-specific usage data from four major cloud providers, creating a robust framework that meets strict healthcare and pharmaceutical procurement standards.
Together, this combination of bespoke automated tools and ongoing expert support removed the operational complexity entirely. By managing the timelines and methodology notes inside a shared workspace, backed by weekly check-ins and ongoing communication via Teams, Furthr took over the heavy lifting of carbon accounting, freeing up internal staff to focus on strategic reduction planning.
The impact
Furthr took over the heavy lifting of carbon accounting, freeing up internal staff to focus on strategic reduction planning and other sustainability initiatives.
Data processing that previously took two team members weeks each year now takes just 1 to 1.5 total days across the entire period, delivering a direct cost saving in staff time and freeing up internal capacity for broader sustainability work, client engagement and business development.
A total of 233 IT devices were measured using exact product carbon footprint data, while 1,800 qualitative expense descriptions were converted into quantified travel distances using airport codes for flights, postcodes for taxi journeys, and specific transport types.
Four major cloud providers shared usage data directly, broken down into Terabytes (TB) of storage, Kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy, or tCO2e, successfully replacing high-level, spend-based estimates for that entire category.
Furthr converted 17,000 individual food items from receipts into weighted activity data, giving Costello Medical visibility into how its catering choices affect its footprint.
Backed by Furthr's extensive emissions factor library and advanced AI models, these weights were used to calculate precise emissions for 1,400 meat and vegetarian meals.
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