SHADE Newsletter 6th February 2025

Author

Mary Pitt
February 06, 2025

Welcome to the thirty first 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?

Since we started this newsletter in November 2023 the SHADE space has become extremely busy. Rich areas of focus have emerged including climate adaptation and mitigation in healthcare, health impact attribution, early warning systems for extreme weather events, e-waste and of course, AI’s ever increasing impact on the environment and health. With this in mind, we are trialling a new format for this newsletter - one that gives a more in depth look at selected topics, rather than one that attempts to cover everything that is happening in the SHADE space. 

For this edition our topics are temperature related mortality and ‘AI for good’. The newsletter also includes what will be a regular space for resources, events and opportunities in the SHADE space.  We hope you enjoy it!

Please tell us what you think of the new format - and anything else in the newsletter -at [email protected].   

Temperature related mortality

  • When investigating how many people died from disasters in 2024, Hannah Ritchie leaves out temperature related deaths. She notes that estimating these deaths takes time as many of them take the form of premature deaths from conditions such as cardiovascular and respiratory disease. The figures for these are not yet available for 2024 as they lag behind the figures for more immediate temperature related deaths, for example those resulting from heat stroke or hypothermia. The importance of including these later deaths is borne out in this literature review summarising the empirical evidence of the effects of climate change on non communicable diseases (NCDs): The reviewed studies ‘overwhelmingly show that extreme heat and rising temperatures are associated with increased mortality, particularly from cardiovascular, respiratory, and all cause outcomes’. Hannah Ritchie notes another issue in the data she is using which affects figures for all years, not just 2024: Recording the deaths associated with pre-existing conditions requires more in depth studies and such studies tend to only include Europe. Consequently there are major discrepancies in the data on temperature related deaths between Europe and other regions. As Ritchie notes ‘I find it hard to believe that no one (or only a handful) dies in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, or South America from heatwaves or cold conditions’.

  • Illustrating this European focus, a study in Nature Medicine estimates future heat-related and cold-related mortality under climate change, demographic and adaptation scenarios in 854 European cities. The findings are dramatic. Firstly, increases in heat deaths will exceed any reductions in cold deaths and secondly, temperature related deaths overall could increase by nearly 50%. The paper’s findings are picked up in this FT report and in a Nature article, Extreme heat will kill millions of people in Europe without rapid action. The message is that mitigating action is needed urgently - we can’t rely on adaptation alone. It would be good to know what a similar study in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa or South America would reveal.

AI for Good?

  • Following on from the success of DeepSeek, and the questions it raises about the (reduced) scale of energy consumption required for AI, could smaller data centres deliver AI? If they could then perhaps there is some room for data centres operating at a smaller scale in urban areas, and these delivering benefits for the local community. They could obtain a ‘social license’ to operate, for example by reusing the heat they generate and partnering with cloud service providers who are more transparent about their environmental impacts.

  • Meanwhile there has been a flurry of ‘AI for health and climate’ initiatives, some of whom have clearly put some effort into their names: Firstly, DESTINY which stands for Digital Evidence Synthesis Tool INnovation for Yielding Improvements in Climate & Health. This is a Wellcome-funded consortium on a ‘mission to build the next generation of evidence synthesis tools driven by artificial intelligence to deliver rigorous living evidence in climate and health that matters to policymakers and other evidence users’. Next comes SOLACE-AI, which stands for ‘Synthesising Online Literature on Adaptation to Climate Emergencies’ and is also Wellcome funded. This is ‘a project aiming to create real-time evidence synthesis to support policy and humanitarian responses to climate-change health emergencies’. Both Destiny and SOLACE-AI emphasise co-creation and feature case studies. Finally, from the IEEE Standards Association, comes AI for Improved Public Health and Climate-Resilient Health Systems. This Industry Connections program looks to foster collaboration, establish a code of practice, promote ethical commercialisation and clarify regulatory pathways - whether you are in tech, academia, healthcare, investment, or a community leader or an NGO, you can get involved.

  • Last but not least, this paper on the challenges and applications of artificial intelligence in infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance reveals the transformative effects of applying AI in diagnostics, therapy and drug discovery in these health areas linked to climate change, The paper also calls for collaboration between healthcare professionals, developers, and regulatory bodies to ensure the responsible, fair and transparent use of AI.

Resources, Events and Opportunities

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