Samuel Gabrielle, Lucassen A M
Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, King's College London, London, UK.
Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics, Oxford University, Oxford, UK.
Digit Health. 2022 Jul 5;8:20552076221111297. doi: 10.1177/20552076221111297. eCollection 2022 Jan-Dec.
Data-Driven and Artificial Intelligence technologies are rapidly changing the way that health research is conducted, including offering new opportunities. This will inevitably have adverse environmental impacts. These include carbon dioxide emissions linked to the energy required to generate and process large amounts of data; the impact on the material environment (in the form of data centres); the unsustainable extraction of minerals for technological components; and e-waste (discarded electronic appliances) disposal. The growth of Data-Driven and Artificial Intelligence technologies means there is now a compelling need to consider these environmental impacts and develop means to mitigate them. Here, we offer a scoping review of how the environmental impacts of data storage and processing during Data-Driven and Artificial Intelligence health-related research are being discussed in the academic literature. Using the UK as a case study, we also offer a review of policies and initiatives that consider the environmental impacts of data storage and processing during Data-Driven and Artificial Intelligence health-related research in the UK. Our findings suggest little engagement with these issues to date. We discuss the implications of this and suggest ways that the Data-Driven and Artificial Intelligence health research sector needs to move to become more environmentally sustainable.
数据驱动和人工智能技术正在迅速改变健康研究的开展方式，包括带来新的机遇。这将不可避免地产生不利的环境影响。这些影响包括与生成和处理大量数据所需能源相关的二氧化碳排放；对物质环境的影响（以数据中心的形式）；技术组件所需矿物的不可持续开采；以及电子垃圾（废弃电子设备）的处理。数据驱动和人工智能技术的发展意味着现在迫切需要考虑这些环境影响并制定减轻影响的方法。在此，我们对学术文献中如何讨论数据驱动和人工智能健康相关研究中数据存储和处理的环境影响进行了范围界定综述。以英国为例，我们还对英国考虑数据驱动和人工智能健康相关研究中数据存储和处理的环境影响的政策和举措进行了综述。我们的研究结果表明，迄今为止对这些问题的关注很少。我们讨论了这一情况的影响，并提出了数据驱动和人工智能健康研究领域需要采取哪些措施以实现更环境可持续发展的建议。
