Climate change and eHealth: a promising strategy for health sector mitigation and adaptation

Abstract

Climate change is one of today's most pressing global issues. Policies to guide mitigation and adaptation are needed to avoid the devastating impacts of climate change. The health sector is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in developed countries, and its climate impact in low-income countries is growing steadily. This paper reviews and discusses the literature regarding health sector mitigation potential, known and hypothetical co-benefits, and the potential of health information technology, such as eHealth, in climate change mitigation and adaptation. The promising role of eHealth as an adaptation strategy to reduce societal vulnerability to climate change, and the link's between mitigation and adaptation, are also discussed. The topic of environmental eHealth has gained little attention to date, despite its potential to contribute to more sustainable and green health care. A growing number of local and global initiatives on ‘green information and communication technology (ICT)’ are now mentioning eHealth as a promising technology with the potential to reduce emission rates from ICT use. However, the embracing of eHealth is slow because of limitations in technological infrastructure, capacity and political will. Further research on potential emissions reductions and co-benefits with green ICT, in terms of health outcomes and economic effectiveness, would be valuable to guide development and implementation of eHealth in health sector mitigation and adaptation policies.

Carbon Footprint of Telemedicine Solutions - Unexplored Opportunity for Reducing Carbon Emissions in the Health Sector

“…However, the environmental impact of ICT is complex and to look at travel savings alone is misleading[5]. By performing a simplified LCA we accounted for the carbon cost of telemedicine and not just the potential to reduce tailpipe emissions.…”

Challenges of Global Public Health Emergencies: Development of a Health-Crisis Management Framework

“…Austin and colleagues (2016) found that national governments have taken a variety of approaches to public health adaptation that do not follow expected convergence and divergence by governance structure. As such, healthcrisis managers must identify their populations at risk, the health education and public awareness priorities of different groups, broad public health information campaigns, financial support for the position of health-crisis managers and their programs, and assurance that no adaptation strategies will aggravate further health and social inequalities (Holmner et al 2012). Paavola (2017) identifies social and health inequalities such as age, pre-existing medical conditions, and social deprivations that, along with exposure to heat and cold, air pollution, pollen, food safety risks, disruptions of both access to and functioning of health services and facilities, and both emerging infections and flooding in making people more vulnerable to adverse health outcomes.…”

“…More basically, there is an expressed urgency for public health researchers and managers to answer several questions, e.g., how to weigh the health of present and future generations; how to balance between the possible immediate adverse impacts of mitigating climate change versus long-term adverse impacts of global change; how to limit the environmental impacts of public health intervention; and how to allocate resources (Holmner et al 2012;Storz 2018). Health Crisis Managers would be faced with a moral responsibility to address key elements to ensure longlasting, innovative global change and health solutions summarizing the responsibilities of any future health crisis managers as: (i) empowering the population; (ii) tailoring the framing of global change and health impacts for different stakeholders; (iii) adopting less conservative approaches on reporting future scenarios; (iv) increasing accountability about the health impacts of mitigation and adaptation strategies; and (v) recognizing the limits of science (Pascal et al 2019).…”

Harmonizing Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation in the Health Sector

“…Telemedicine is routinely used in countries, such as Canada, Sweden, Scotland and Australia, which have in common a sparse and scattered population. Telemedicine has been shown to improve access to and even quality of care, and in some cases to cut costs [6][7][8]. What most people don't even reflect upon is that telemedicine services also has a great carbon reduction potential by reducing the need for travelling [9][10][11][12] and the positive effects remains when accounting for the carbon costs of manufacturing, using and disposing of the technology used to facilitate such virtual meetings (Holmner et al, submitted for publication).…”