The roles of digital health in climate change

The roles of digital health in addressing climate change can be categorized as follows:

1. Mitigation of the impact of health services on climate change (e.g., reduction of carbon emissions).

2. Management of climate change-triggered infection diseases (e.g., outbreaks triggered by climate change).

3. Management of climate change-triggered environmental health risks (e.g., heat stress).
   

Major contributors to healthcare carbon emissions include patient and staff travel, heating or cooling of facilities, medicines (such as inhalers), waste management, and electricity used for computer server farms. Evidence is emerging on the impacts of tele-services on reducing healthcare’s carbon footprint. A recent systematic review showed that virtual consultations could lead to a carbon reduction of 0.7 to 4.35 metric tons, depending on the mode of travel used.(1) Reductions are more pronounced when considering the distance travel required in remote areas.  

Digital health, which includes data sensing, monitoring, electronic data capture, modelling, decision support systems, and communication technologies can also support in managing climate change-triggered infectious diseases. For example, methods for predicting or identifying areas at risk of infectious diseases can be done by using geospatial data and processing tools.(2) Decision support systems can support by generating alerts or warnings when outbreaks are identified.(2)

The third area in which digital health can support is the management of climate change-triggered environmental health risks (e.g., heat stress). Sensors such as wearable devices or remote sensing tools could measure an individual’s exposure to environmental health risks. Another use case is the application of a novel unsupervised machine learning technique which was validated on historical data and used to detect heatwave events unnoticed by a previous surveillance system.(4)

While digital health has the potential to directly contribute to climate change adaptation and mitigation, it is important to consider that environmental effects of digital health go beyond the confines of hospitals and traditional healthcare settings (e.g., supply chains of hardware, energy use for data storage). To identify areas in which digital health can be conductive to sustainability, organizations should be well-equipped to conduct internal assessments on the impacts of digital health on their environmental footprint. 

Sources:

1. Understanding virtual urology clinics: a systematic review. BJU Int. 2020 Nov;126(5):536-546.

2. Modelling the effects of global climate change on Chikungunya transmission in the 21st century. Scientific reports. 2017 Jun 19;7(1):3813.

3. Digital health for climate change mitigation and response: a scoping review. JAMIA. 2022 Dec 29;12; 2140–2152.

4. Toward unsupervised outbreak detection through visual perception of new patterns. BMC Public Health. 2009 Dec; 9:1-8.