SHADE Newsletter 30th May 2024

Welcome to the fourteenth 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 newsletter, we highlight the lack of global, One Health disease surveillance. We take a sweep through the latest on AI infrastructure and AI safety initiatives, check in on the build up to this week’s World Health Assembly and the UN meeting on AMR in September, explore a new approach to Health Technology Assessment, take in some neat communications on the environmental sustainability of digital tech, deep dive into EU tech regulations and much more.  We hope you enjoy it!

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

Highlight on (the lack of) surveillance

• Nature reports on the risks of bird flu in cows spreading to humans, highlighting calls for more testing for cattle and people working on farms.

• A key insight emerging from analysing disease outbreaks globally is that outbreak intensity is mainly dictated by the proximity of a health facility. This shows that disease surveillance systems are insufficient for comprehensive monitoring and response.

• The first paper in the Lancet Series on AMR calls for surveillance that covers all geographical areas, minimises biases towards hospital derived data and includes non human niches. (Hear from Dr. Iruka N. Okeke, one of the authors of this paper, in ‘what we’re listening to’ below)

News

• The Global Climate and Health Alliance calls for the adoption of an urgent resolution on climate change and health by WHO member states at this week’s World Health Assembly.

• WHO publishes its Environmental and Social Safeguards Framework, intended to promote universal access to healthcare, as well as social equity, environmental responsibility and gender equality.

• A flurry of news on the AI infrastructure front: The initial launch of drug discovery tool AlphaFold3, with its code withheld, has strengthened calls for public sector infrastructure to develop and distribute such tools in future. Meanwhile, amid reports of creaking electricity grids as AI demands soar, find out more on energy star ratings for AI models. Finally, an Indian start up plans to harvest heat from data centres to power on site air to water conversion, dramatically reducing data centres’ water consumption.

• In the run up to the Global AI Safety Summit last week in Seoul, Ada Lovelace highlighted the issues with the voluntary approach adopted by the UK’s AI Safety Institute, comparing it with what happens in the pharmaceutical industry. Meanwhile the UK government announced £8.5M in grants to study how to protect society from AI risks ‘such as deep fakes and cyber attacks’, Grants studying the environmental risks associated with AI did not get explicitly mentioned, although grants that helped to harness ‘increased productivity’ benefits of AI did. More clues to the future priorities for these ongoing summits being less about safety, and more about the race to keep up with AI innovation, came from future hosts France.

What we’re listening to and looking at

• Dr. Iruka N Okeke talks about AMR and the criticality of surveillance in the latest episode from the One World, One Health podcast.

• Hannah Smith of the Green Web Foundation makes the case that environmental sustainability should top the AI risk register. The latest podcast from GreenIO looks at the story so far in addressing environmental sustainability in the EU AI Act.

• This Periodic Table from the European Chemical Society provides a neat perspective on sustainability at an elemental level.

• The story behind the most toxic zip code in the US.

What we’re reading

• The Lancet Series on AMR demonstrates the potential of existing interventions, calls for a rethink of drug development and proposes a targets based approach, ahead of the UN high level meeting on AMR in September.

• A scoping review on climate change, malaria and neglected tropical diseases leaves its authors with a ‘deepened sense of foreboding’.

• The findings from a Canadian study into taking a Disease Management approach to Health Technology Assessment. These suggest such an approach could promote integrated, proactive, sustainable and resilient health systems internationally.

• A meta analysis on global change drivers and the risk of infectious disease. This study attempts to establish which global change drivers most increase disease and in what contexts.

• Nature takes a look at all the different methods being employed to break the black box of AI, including methods that are usually applied to humans.

• Rutger Hoekstra’s review of Daniel Susskind’s book, Growth: A Reckoning takes in green growth, degrowth, health, data and morality.

Events

• The AI Fringe is exploring discussions from the AI Seoul Summit on June 5th at the British Library in London. Tickets are free!

• There is still time to sign up for CleanMed Europe, happening online from June 3rd to June 7th.

Opportunities

• The MSc in Climate Change and Planetary Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine is now available online. Apply now for 2024/25.

• Sign up for updates from the Pathfinder Initiative, which is bringing together evidence on climate mitigation actions with the largest potential health benefits. You can also submit your evidence to the initiative.

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