Does digital health make the climate crisis worse?

29 September, 2022

Hello,

The greatest threat to health in the 21st century is climate change - or more accurately, the climate and ecological crisis - according to the WHO. All digital technology is environmentally damaging, from mining minerals, manufacture, transport, power during usage and ends up as e-Waste. The digital health community must address this - if we don’t, digital health is part of the problem.

A piece on this has been published by ICT Works here:

https://www.ictworks.org/digital-health-climate-crisis-problem-solution/...

There are three areas to consider:

- Minimize the environmental harm of digital health (e.g. renewable power like solar, recycling, digital temperance)

- Services to mitigate the crisis (improve resilience of health systems under climate shock, Apps for pollution monitoring and many other issues)

- Reduce the environmental harm of the global healthcare sector which is a huge emitter of carbon. Digital health can reduce this through telemedicine, digital self-care and medical call centres reducing the need for physical infrastructure.

Some of us have started considering how digital health should respond to the climate crisis. We would love to hear about others already working on this, learn from you and see how we can build a bigger movement together.

Please join us by emailing Peter Benjamin (peter@healthenabled.org) or Neal Lesh (nlesh@dimagi.com)

HIFA profile: Peter Benjamin is SA director of HealthEnabled, South Africa. Professional interests: Digital health, mHealth, Empowerment through health information. Email address: peter AT healthenabled.org