When sustainability is discussed within life sciences, attention often gravitates toward manufacturing, materials, and energy use. Yet one of the most impactful, but often overlooked, levers for reducing environmental impact sits elsewhere: services.
At Cytiva, digital and remote service innovations are transforming how customers qualify, maintain, and support their equipment. The result is not only greater efficiency, but also a meaningful reduction in emissions and resource use—without compromising compliance or performance. Let’s take a closer look at two powerful examples: eQualification and remote service support.
From paper binders to digital confidence: eQualification
Qualification has traditionally been a paper-heavy process. Physical binders, printed appendices, shipping, manual signatures, and document storage have long been accepted as necessary to ensure compliance.
eQualification challenges that assumption.
By replacing conventional paper binders with a fully digital qualification experience, Cytiva enables customers to complete IQ/OQ, requalification, and change control procedures electronically from start to finish. Documentation is created, reviewed, approved, and delivered digitally, with secure access to a complete audit trail and compliance with GDP, GAMP5, ALCOA+, and 21 CFR Part 11 requirements.
The result? eQualification eliminates an estimated 100 000 kg of CO2 emissions yearly.*
From a sustainability perspective, the impact is clear. Digital qualification eliminates the need to print, ship, and store large volumes of paper documentation, directly reducing paper waste and associated CO₂ emissions from transportation. At the same time, electronic storage minimizes the risk of document loss or duplication that wastes time and materials.
Beyond environmental benefits, eQualification can speed up the qualification itself. Digital binders are available as soon as content is ready, documents can be reviewed and approved more quickly, and hyperlinks make audits easier to navigate. Sustainability here isn’t a trade‑off—it’s a by‑product of doing things better.
Fixing more, travelling less: the power of remote support
Sustainability gains accelerate further when physical travel can be avoided altogether.
Remote service capabilities offered by Cytiva—including OptiRun™ View augmented reality solution, OptiRun™ Assist screen sharing tool, OptiRun™ Connect remote monitoring system, and the online service center—are redefining how equipment issues are diagnosed and resolved. Today, 45% of service faults are resolved remotely, without needing an engineer to travel on-site.*
Avoiding a site visit cuts travel-related emissions and gets customers back up and running faster.
Even when an on‑site intervention is required, remote support still plays a critical role. Pre‑diagnosis through digital tools allows service engineers to arrive with the right spare parts and a clear repair plan, reducing on‑site intervention time by 33%.* The sustainability impacts compound: fewer trips, shorter visits, and more efficient repairs—all supported by real service performance data from ServiceMax™, our system for planning and optimizing field operations.
In 2025, remote support saved 100 340 kg of CO2. These savings equate to:
- 826 250 km of driving
- 20 070 000 smartphones charged
- 460 955 trees absorbing CO2 in one year.*
Sustainability through service design
What makes these examples powerful is that sustainability isn’t treated as an add‑on. It’s a natural outcome of efficiency.
Digital qualification inherently reduces material use. Remote diagnostics minimize transportation emissions. And fast, efficient approvals support smoother operations while reducing environmental impact.
This approach reflects a broader shift in how sustainability is achieved—not only by changing what we produce, but by rethinking how we support, maintain, and qualify the technologies our customers rely on.
A scalable, customer‑centric impact
Perhaps most importantly, service‑driven sustainability scales naturally. Every digital qualification completed, every remote fault resolved, and every streamlined site visit contributes to lower emissions. When multiplied across entire networks, the impact becomes even more meaningful.
For customers, the benefits are immediate: faster turnaround times, greater compliance confidence, reduced downtime, and lower operational burden. For the planet, the benefits accumulate quietly but significantly through fewer shipments, less paper, and smaller travel footprint.
Looking ahead
As sustainability expectations continue to rise, service innovation will play an increasingly central role in meeting them. eQualification and remote support demonstrate that meaningful environmental impact doesn’t always require radical reinvention—sometimes it comes from digitizing the right processes and enabling smarter ways of working.
In this sense, sustainable services do more than align with sustainability goals held within Cytiva; they help shape a more efficient, resilient, and responsible future for bioprocessing.
* Data from Servicemax 2025.