SHADE Newsletter 17th April 2025

Welcome to the thirty sixth 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 takes an in depth look at selected topics, as well as highlighting new resources, events and opportunities in the SHADE space.

In this newsletter we zoom in on Health Data, AMR and AI risks and regulation. We hope you enjoy it!

The newsletter will be taking a brief Easter holiday but we will be back in May.

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

Health Data - Access and Security

• This call to invest in locally-owned health data systems comes from DHIS2 and HISP in response to the current crisis in global health financing. The article is informed by the results of a survey across the HISP network, and highlights that locally-owned national health information systems remain online in contrast to some global ones.

• Meanwhile the UK government announces better and faster access to NHS data for researchers, with gold standard security and privacy measures. The Health Data Research Service will bring ‘access to data for medical research into one secure and easy-to-use location’. Wellcome, who are providing funding and hosting for the new service, highlight that it will allow for de-identified data to be analysed without being exported.

• The BBC looks at a possible longer term option for data, examining the pros and cons of data centres in space. The pros include unlimited solar energy, ‘no neighbours to complain about the environmental impacts’ and security, including the ability to ensure data sovereignty, something that poses particular challenges in relation to health data. The cons include the emissions of rocket launchers to get the data centres up in the first place and cooling and maintenance considerations.

• Finally the World Health Organisation agrees on a legally binding pandemic treaty, a key element of which is the rapid sharing of data about new diseases.

AMR

• This year saw the launch of the Climate Change Impacts on AMR Using a Planetary Health Framework (CLIMAR) network.

• With the relationship between climate change, AMR and planetary health in mind, a clutch of recent AMR related papers bring digital technology into the mix: Firstly, Indian cormorants are shown to harbour antimicrobial-resistant bacteria. Secondly, a bacterium first identified in space exhibits resistance to several first-line antibiotics. Thirdly, from the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, GP or ChatGPT? looks at the ability of large language models (LLMs) to support general practitioners when prescribing antibiotics . Finally, the often limited resources on board ships, coupled with the global connectivity of maritime trade, create challenges for the global AMR response: This review from Current Infectious Disease Reports examines the issues in detail, highlighting how telemedicine is showing promise as one intervention.

AI Risks and Regulation

• The 2025 AI Index Report from the Stanford Institute for Human-Centred AI is out. Key take-aways include that AI is becoming more efficient, affordable and accessible, but also that AI model scale continues to grow rapidly - ‘training compute doubles every five months, datasets every eight, and power use annually’.

• Meanwhile this article from Tech Policy Press highlights how considering certain risks is in danger of becoming optional under the Code of Practice for the EU AI Act. These risks include risks to public health as well as risks to the environment and to non-human welfare. The article highlights that the downgrading of such risks to optional status sends a clear signal that the development of the Code of Practice is ‘buckling under pressure from corporate interests’.

• This paper from Science highlights the discrepancy between the speed of development and rollout of digital technologies and the slow pace of the ‘routine science’ currently employed to regulate such technologies. The article focuses on socio-technical risks, in particular the mental health risks around online platforms. It calls for a redesign of the ‘Science of Safety’, proposing multiple, interconnected ways of doing this and highlighting how many of these approaches are already employed in public health areas such as environmental toxicology.

• From BRAID, a ‘Responsible AI Futures’ Hybrid Seminar - in this talk at 4pm BST on April 24th, Dan McQuillan will argue that having a responsible approach to AI means decomputing.

Resources, Events and Opportunities

• Register for this one hour public webinar on Digital Health and the Climate Crisis on Wednesday 23rd April at 3pm BST: Digital health and climate intersect in many and varied ways. This webinar will provide an overview of development in this fast-moving area. SHADE co-director, Gabby Samuel, is a co-chair of the digital health & climate working group behind the webinar. The group have prepared this overview of digital health and the climate crisis.

• Check out this video from Bloomberg Originals exploring biocomputing and its potential environmental and health benefits.

• The Guardian reports on health concerns for people living near Elon Musk’s xAI facility in Memphis, where aerial images suggest that ‘illegal’ gas generators are being used to provide extra power.

• The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine issues its response to funding cuts and attacks on science. Meanwhile Nature reports on the Trump administration’s plans to slash funding for climate modelling and monitoring and extreme weather forecasting.

• The FT reports on the heatwave in central Asia fuelled by climate change, with the co-lead of World Weather Attribution warning that ‘hotter March temperatures are impacting agriculture harvests and access to water in Central Asia, as well as people’s health’.

• The Green Software Foundation reports on a major step towards transparent, sustainable cloud computing, with the ratification of its Real Time Energy and Carbon Standard for Cloud Providers, also known as the Real Time Cloud. This project ‘helps organizations clearly and transparently communicate and validate their sustainability claims, minimizing the risk of misinformation and supporting effective emissions reductions’.

• This paper from The Lancet Regional Health Europe proposes a toolkit of interventions to manage the rising risk of Vector Borne Diseases in Europe resulting from climate change, environmental degradation and globalisation. Themes include data harmonisation and early warning systems.

• How Synthetic Patients Are Helping Uncover Environmental Drivers of Autoimmune & Rheumatic Disease from Stanford Medicine describes an initiative to build synthetic patients based on US veterans: ‘Veterans often experience a unique constellation of exposures and vulnerabilities, making them an ideal group for understanding how environmental stressors intersect with chronic illness’. The research uses AI and one of the largest medical databases in the US.

• Applications for the Sustainable Healthcare Leadership Institute are open. This is a year-long intensive professional program designed to equip mid-career healthcare professionals with the technical knowledge, leadership skills, and peer network to lead efforts within their healthcare institutions to improve sustainability while aligning with quality improvement, cost savings, social accountability, and organizational mission. Closing data for applications is July 1st.

• Using newly published emissions data and state of the art modelling to simulate how the climate system would respond to rapid drops in aerosol levels, specifically in China, researchers in Norway isolated the global warming impact of reductions in Chinese aerosol pollution. This highlights the complex interplay between efforts to reduce air pollution and climate change as the New Scientist reports.

And finally, check out the latest version of the Digital Sustainability Game from Climate Acuity at the Sussex Digital Humanities Lab at the University of Sussex. .

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