Dealing with a global vision for the future of health, The World Health Organization (WHO) launched the One Health challenge, an integrated, unifying approach that aims to sustainably balance and optimize the health of people, animals and ecosystems. This paradigm intersects the United Nations recommendation to make every adult able to access digital networks and digitally-enabled health services to support the achievement of the SDGs by 2030. In line with these recommendations, AI can contribute to the achievement of health-related targets, as some research and action plans are demonstrating.
Even though a research agenda focused on the use of AI to achieve one health goals is still far to be completed, several independent researchers are investigating the way this technology can accelerate the understanding of the causes and the finding of possible solutions to health problems affecting species, ecosystems, and ultimately, humans. For example, a recent Italian study, conducted implemented and training specific AI algorithms highlighted that the environment plays a much bigger role in cancer diseases than we thought. In this research, AI enabled the analysis of the links existing between cancer mortality, socio-economic factors, and sources of environmental pollution in Italy. Results showed that cancer mortality among Italian citizens exceeds the national average, especially when environmental pollution is higher in certain areas, despite healthier lifestyles. Another recent study analyzed – thanks to specific algorithms – the effects of environmental pollution on diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and autism.
These are enormous advances in knowledge with clear implications for One Health that would have been incredibly slow without AI technologies and a multidisciplinary approach to research. It is clear that in an era where the time to fix the severe damages done in the past is limited, AI potential is huge and could represent the only chance for human being to accelerate innovation and identify lean solutions that benefit all species, including humans, and the Earth’s ecosystems in the long term.
