The environmental impact of data-driven precision medicine initiatives

Journal article

Opportunities offered by precision medicine have long been promised in the medical and health literature. However, precision medicine – and the methodologies and approaches it relies on – also has adverse environmental impacts. As research into precision medicine continues to expand, there is a compelling need to consider these environmental impacts and develop means to mitigate them. In this article, we review the adverse environmental impacts associated with precision medicine, with a particular focus on those associated with its underlying need for data-intensive approaches. We illustrate the importance of considering the environmental impacts of precision medicine and describe the adverse health outcomes that are associated with climate change. We follow this with a description of how these environmental impacts are being addressed in both the health and data-driven technology sector. We then describe the (scant) literature on environmental impacts associated with data-driven precision medicine specifically. We finish by highlighting various environmental considerations that precision medicine researchers, and the field more broadly, should take into account

Authors: Samuel, G; Lucassen, AM

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
• Journal: Cambridge Prisms Precision Medicine
• Volume: 1
• Pages: e1-e1
• Article number: e1
• Publication date: 2022-09-26
• DOI: 10.1017/pcm.2022.1
• ISSN: 2752-6143
• Language: English
• Keywords: Risk analysis (engineering); Environmental science; Environmental data; Environmental planning; Field (mathematics); Medicine; Climate change; Public health; Environmental resource management; Computer science; Environmental medicine; Data science; Environmental impact assessment; Political science; Precision medicine