SHADE Newsletter 12th December 2024

Welcome to the twenty eighth edition of the SHADE newsletter! 

SHADE is a research hub with a mission to explore issues at the intersection of digital technologies/AI, health and the environment. It is guided by a fundamental question: How should the balance between AI/digital enabled health and planetary health be struck in different areas of the world, and what should be the guiding principles?

The SHADE newsletter comes out every two weeks, bringing you a selection of the latest news, upcoming events, academic publications and podcasts in the SHADE space.

In this bumper edition, we highlight zoonotic surveillance and AMR, doing a round up of recent developments on each. We take a sweep through last week’s conferences, air pollution, mental health, climate and weather news, wearables and doctors’ protests. We check in on new strategies and guidelines in the SHADE space, call out the BBC and links between medical research and the fossil fuel industry. We take a joined up (ish) look at AI for and against the climate, medical research and scientific practices, risky investments and nuclear power… and much more.  

We hope you enjoy it and that it tides you over the holiday period to our next newsletter in January!

Please tell us what you like, what you don’t like and what you think is missing at [email protected].   

Highlight on Zoonotic Surveillance and AMR

• Zoonotic Surveillance: Environmental changes are a known factor in zoonotic emerging infectious diseases (EIDs), and One Health approaches are clearly critical for their early detection. This newsletter has previously reported on Realising a global One Health disease surveillance approach: insights from wastewater and beyond, but there are many other recent developments in this area. First up a paper looking at the evolution of Kenya’s animal health surveillance system and its potential for efficient detection of zoonoses. Second, a news story describes strengthening animal health and zoonotic surveillance in the Democratic Republic of Congo with DHIS2. Third, from the US Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Pulling lifesaving data out of thin air, literally using airborne sampling devices and remote DNA testing which massively accelerates the identification of pathogens. Finally the World Organisation for Animal Health has launched ZOOSURSY, a new disease surveillance project funded by the European Union.

• AMR: First, Wellcome reports on efforts to better understand AMR in South Africa, and how local communities can fill in significant AMR data gaps, in ‘You can never do something for us without us’: Why community-led research is vital in the fight against AMR. (See also Wellcome’s explainer on the connections between climate change and AMR). Second, this paper in the Lancet Global Health highlights the lack of access to effective antibiotics for pneumonia and sepsis in LMICs. The paper describes the variety of solutions needed to address this, including an AI powered collaborative effort to identify new antibiotic classes that can combat AMR. Finally, this paper applies a One Health lens to climate change and the transmission of foodborne pathogens and AMR.

News

• The Global Digital Health Forum (GDHF) in Nairobi last week saw the publication of this Digital Health and the Climate Crisis Overview 2024 (see more in ‘Opportunities’ below) as well as the formal announcement of the new PATH Initiative to Integrate Global Climate and Health Data.

• From the Guardian, How climate policies reduce air pollution saving lives and money.

• A BMJ investigation reveals the extent of the fossil fuel industry’s links with medical research.

• The BBC looks at the pros and cons of wearable tech, ‘a multi-billion dollar industry with a sharp focus on health tracking’. Environmental considerations are not mentioned.

• Nature reports on a preliminary study which suggests a possible link between long-term heat exposure and molecular markers of ageing.

• This article from the British Journal of Psychiatry gives an overview of the integration of mental health within current climate policies and regulations in the UK, including gaps and opportunities.

• Health Care Without Harm launches its International strategic plan 2024-2028.

• A trio of climate related stories: First, this paper in Nature on probabilistic weather forecasting with machine learning ‘helps open the next chapter in operational weather forecasting’. Secondly, Spain’s flash floods reveal a desperate need for improved mitigation efforts: Maria Carmen Llasat outlines what’s needed in this Nature World View article. Thirdly, from the 2024 Arctic Report Card: The Arctic tundra is now a net source of carbon dioxide.

• Shifting When and Where Electricity is Used Can Avoid Gigatons of Carbon Emissions from Triple Pundit highlights the connection between ‘marginal emissions data and social justice and environmental justice’.

• From The Doctor, Emergency measures: doctors' struggle against climate change.

• The Web Sustainability Guidelines (WSG) are now available in draft form on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

• Natallia Kachura gives her Take aways from the GreenIO Paris conference last week.

What we’re listening to

• The latest episode of the One World One Health podcast talks to Dr Marina Romanello, Executive Director of the Lancet Countdown, about the impacts of climate change on health, governments’ ongoing support for fossil fuels in the face of climate destruction, where there is hope and what individuals can do.

• AI has dreamt up a blizzard of new proteins. Do any of them actually work? asks this episode of the Nature podcast. The podcast highlights how AI tools in medical research have ‘exploded both in popularity and power’.

• Analogue to digital in the NHS: is the shift within reach? – with Holly Krelle and Erik Mayer. This episode of the Health Foundation podcast makes no mention of the environmental impacts of the analogue to digital shift. 

• This episode of Environment Variables looks at the intersection of AI, sustainability and the maritime industry. Could there be lessons for healthcare?  

What we’re reading

• The Climate Action against Disinformation coalition report on how ‘the expansion of AI is a climate problem being sold as a climate solution’, a point echoed in this SHADE authored blog from the Ada Lovelace Institute, which also contrasts the frenzied investment in AI with the dearth of action on AI’s environmental impacts.

• Meanwhile this episode from the Nature podcast (see more in ‘what we’re listening to’ above) and this preprint describing an AI-human Virtual Lab provide recent illustrations of the AI expansion phenomenon in medical research. The explosive growth comes despite calls in other areas of medical research, such as neuroimagjng, for better experimental design and hence replicability in the era of big data and AI - calls for ‘quality, rather than quantity’.

• Quality not quantity would also be in the interests of the environment as this paper in PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, estimating the carbon footprint of research in Earth, environment and space sciences, illustrates. The paper goes on to look at how “a deeper transformation of scientific practices, away from competitive, grant-based and innovation-oriented current practices” could make substantial reductions in these footprints.

• This is unlikely to be a welcome message for Ian Hogarth, the chair of the UK’s AI Safety Institute. Writing in the FT he asks Can Europe build its first trillion-dollar start-up? He believes that the “the key is to cherish the role of experienced founders” and “celebrate when they fund the riskiest and most important tech”.

• Ian Hogarth also suggests that one area in which Europe can be optimistic (about its chances of building its first trillion-dollar start-up) is in nuclear fusion. An immersive piece in Nature tells the story of an historic milestone that has sparked fresh interest in nuclear fusion. The piece concludes, however, that nuclear fusion is “still a science programme, not an engineering programme” and as such, despite its ‘almost negligible carbon emissions’ it is highly unlikely to save the planet, or at least the planet as we know it.

• It doesn’t look as though conventional nuclear fission will either, according to an article from Beyond Fossil Fuels, which highlights how the AI boom means that data centres could drain Europe’s power supplies and threaten climate action. (This point is backed up by an article in The Journal on Ireland's data centres turning to fossil fuels after maxing out country's electricity grid). The Beyond Fossil Fuels article characterizes ‘unproven Small Modular Reactors’, which would use conventional nuclear fission, as one of ‘Big Tech’s ‘faux green’ solutions’, incapable of addressing ‘the immediate, large-scale emissions caused by data centre expansion’.

• Finally this article from Nature highlights that ‘we need space to ask ‘why AI’ in the context of many pressing social and ecological challenges'. The article examines what ‘open’ AI really means and how, open or not, AI development is still in the hands of powerful companies driven by commercial interests and not the needs of the public.

Events

• Medical Students for a Sustainable Future (MS4SF) are holding their annual research symposium Climate Health Equity Day: Our Planet, Our Patients, Our Future in collaboration with The Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health (MSCCH) at their 2025 Annual Meeting on March 1, 2025. This will be a hybrid event held at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. and online via Zoom.

Opportunities

• The call for abstracts for the DHIS2 Annual Conference in June is open. Themes include DHIS2 for Climate and Health. The deadline for submissions is February 2nd.

• Join the Digital Health and Climate working group to build responsible digital health for a heating planet. Instructions on joining are at the end of this Digital Health and the Climate Crisis Overview 2024.

• If you are interested in presenting at the MS4SF event (see ‘Events’ above) on March 1st, fill out this abstract form by January 1st at 11:59 pm ET.

• Faculty at institutions offering medical training are invited to participate in this inaugural survey assessing climate and health education within medical training programs. Survey results will contribute to an annual metric for the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change.

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