SHADE Newsletter 4th April 2024

Welcome to the tenth 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 ongoing challenges in making digital health environmentally aware. We take a sweep through developments in data centres and the cloud, check in on health accoustics, call out the Economist, ask if AI is iatrogenic 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 ongoing failure to consider environmental sustainability in digital health

• A scoping review looking at what is available in health technology assessments for considering environmental impacts concludes that there are no tools fit for widespread use. It notes that existing methods may be prone to greenwashing. Another study focussing on what’s available for medical leaders comes to a similar conclusion, also noting the dangers of greenwashing in the vacuum created and the over dominance of market considerations.

• These papers perhaps explain why this week’s Economist can devote ten pages to the promise of AI in healthcare with no mention of the environmental concerns surrounding this, and why its accompanying leader, asking what’s holding up the AI health revolution, can acknowledge the importance of regulation around efficacy and patient safety, but not mention regulation around environmental sustainability.

News

• As Google AI breaks new ground in health accoustics, the “massive data set” of human sounds used in training their foundational model is highlighted. This comes as the CEO of Nvidia proclaims data centres as the new “AI factories” and reveals the latest AI super chip to boost production in the factories. The rapidly escalating energy demands, and hence rises in carbon emissions, from these factories are addressed, to a very limited extent, by a new emissions reporting scheme for European data centres.

• Digital Twins are in the news - this time Earth twins based on AI foundation models. In the short term these could support the adaptation of existing healthcare infrastructures to climate change. Longer term they could even facilitate the testing of new infrastructures. The article notes that such twins will require substantial computing to generate training data and for training itself, but concludes that the energy needs of large pre-trained models will be offset by the “low power requirements” of their use in comparison with the alternative of “probably too many expensive numerical simulations”. It will be interesting to see how this offsetting works out in practice.

What we’re listening to

• Does Cloud Cost the Earth?, the second film from Dark Matter’s Clouded TV.

• This episode of Environment Variables looks at tech’s role in decarbonising the energy grid and this episode explores the complexity of the rebound effect.

What we’re reading

• A paper from SHADE’s co-founders on how to prize the digital sector away from fruitlessly chasing the perfect carbon calculator, and move it in the direction of decision making in uncertainty.

• A report on how best to convene those working in the emerging field of Climate Sensitive Infectious Disease (CSID), to ensure digital tools developed in this space are sustainable and resilient.

• Jonnie Penn asks if AI is bad for our health, and how a growing movement to recognise this may ultimately have more effect in controlling AI’s rollout than pitting environmental concerns against the promise of digital technologies.

• A paper arguing that climate conscious digital health equity must remain a guiding principle if we are to achieve climate conscious digital healthcare.

• A review of the impact of digital campaigns to improve hospital waste management.

• A paper arguing for more accessible, and sustainable, diagnostic tools as a response to the climate crisis, highlights the importance of diagnostics data in a One Heath approach to adapting to climate change.

Events

• This year’s European Healthcare Climate Summit will be held in October 2024 - watch this space.

• ICT for Sustainability 2024 in Stockholm, June 24th to 28th.

• Rethinking the inevitability of AI: An online conference hosted by the University of Virginia. Paper proposals are due April 22nd, the conference date is July 18th.

• Sustainable Healthcare Academic Research and Enterprise (SHARE) annual conference is on June 25th. Registration is free for this online conference.

Opportunities

• Climate Change AI’s virtual summer school runs for 7 weeks throughout June and July. The application deadline is April 14th and you can specify what areas - eg Health - you are most interested in on the application form

• The submission window for a Focus Collection on Environmental Sustainability and Healthcare is open until September 15th. Early submissions are welcomed, will be reviewed without delay and published when ready on an incremental basis.

And finally, check out this cartography which maps out the extractions, agencies and resources that enable generative AI.

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