Digital health for climate change mitigation and response: a scoping review

Abstract

Objective Climate change poses a major threat to the operation of global health systems, triggering large scale health events, and disrupting normal system operation. Digital health may have a role in the management of such challenges and in greenhouse gas emission reduction. This scoping review explores recent work on digital health responses and mitigation approaches to climate change. Materials and Methods We searched Medline up to February 11, 2022, using terms for digital health and climate change. Included articles were categorized into 3 application domains (mitigation, infectious disease, or environmental health risk management), and 6 technical tasks (data sensing, monitoring, electronic data capture, modeling, decision support, and communication). The review was PRISMA-ScR compliant. Results The 142 included publications reported a wide variety of research designs. Publication numbers have grown substantially in recent years, but few come from low- and middle-income countries. Digital health has the potential to reduce health system greenhouse gas emissions, for example by shifting to virtual services. It can assist in managing changing patterns of infectious diseases as well as environmental health events by timely detection, reducing exposure to risk factors, and facilitating the delivery of care to under-resourced areas. Discussion While digital health has real potential to help in managing climate change, research remains preliminary with little real-world evaluation. Conclusion Significant acceleration in the quality and quantity of digital health climate change research is urgently needed, given the enormity of the global challenge.

Designing digital health applications for climate change mitigation and adaptation

“…Critically, digital health has the potential to directly contribute to climate change adaptation and mitigation 3,5,12 . In the context of Australia, inhabitants are exposed to diverse climatic conditions, such as drought, heatwaves, floods and bushfires.…”

“…The Riyadh declaration on digital health reinforced the importance of digital technology, including surveillance technology, data and innovation for resilient global health care systems 16 . Digital surveillance technology is of growing importance as Australia sees the emergence of pathogens previously not endemic to the country (eg, the Japanese encephalitis virus), which is attributed to the impacts of climate change on vector‐borne diseases 12,17 . Throughout the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic, Australian health care services adapted rapidly to virtual care models enabled by telehealth and DHT applications.…”

“…The concept of One Health integrates and unifies the approach to sustainably balance and optimise the health of people, animals and ecosystems, including the potential digital health connections across these systems 24 . To facilitate and improve interactions between One Health and digital health, there is a need to deliver near real‐time data‐driven contributions across systems of medicine and ecology, 25 such as the use of public‐generated data in air quality monitoring 15 and algorithms that are public health‐focused, which can respond to outbreak scenarios and emergency management systems 12 . The intersections of digital and environmental health literacy are equally crucial to promoting and understanding climate change adaptation 26 …”

“…On an individual level, clinicians must be suitably aware and motivated to address these challenges through their own education and then educating and empowering their colleagues to create change 31 . On a system level, the key to success is in interdisciplinary approaches involving all stakeholders in expanding sustainable and impactful DHT interventions through responsible, equitable design, and in assisting health care professionals in accurately measuring and mitigating the impact of these interventions on the environment 5,10,12 …”

“…Critically, digital health has the potential to directly contribute to climate change adaptation and mitigation. 3,5,12 In the context of Australia, inhabitants are exposed to diverse climatic conditions, such as drought, heatwaves, floods and bushfires. Smokerelated air pollution from the 2019-20 south-eastern Australia bushfires reached hazardous levels across rural and metropolitan areas and affected neighbouring New Zealand.…”