WS #53 Leveraging the Internet in Environment and Health Resilience

Summary

This session at the Internet Governance Forum in Norway focused on leveraging the Internet for environment and health resilience, co-moderated by Jorn Erbguth and members of the Dynamic Coalition on Data-Driven Health Technologies. The discussion explored how digital technologies can enhance healthcare resilience while also introducing new vulnerabilities and risks of abuse.

Speakers emphasized that while Internet connectivity proved crucial during COVID-19 for telemedicine and remote healthcare services, total dependence on networks creates vulnerabilities to cyberattacks and system outages that can disrupt clinical decisions and supply chains. The session highlighted concerns about how large-scale health data collection and AI systems could perpetuate or create new inequities, using the example of funding disparities between breast cancer and prostate cancer research despite similar incidence and mortality rates.

Participants from developing regions, particularly the Caribbean and Africa, shared challenges including limited Internet access, high costs, natural disasters, cultural barriers, and dependence on external funding and expertise. They stressed the importance of digital literacy, community engagement, and culturally relevant solutions that integrate local languages and address affordability concerns.

Several speakers presented examples of successful digital health initiatives, including malaria modeling projects, air quality monitoring systems, and outbreak surveillance platforms. However, they emphasized that equity must be a design principle rather than an afterthought in developing these technologies.

The discussion concluded with calls for unified regulatory frameworks, multi-stakeholder collaboration, and a renewed digital social contract that prioritizes people and planet over profit. Participants agreed that while technology offers tremendous opportunities to improve healthcare and environmental resilience, careful governance is essential to manage risks and ensure equitable access to benefits.

Keypoints

## Major Discussion Points:

– **Digital divide and accessibility challenges in healthcare technology**: Speakers from developing regions (Caribbean, Africa) highlighted significant barriers including limited internet access, high costs, lack of digital literacy, and cultural resistance to adopting digital health solutions.

– **Data quality, validity, and governance in health and environmental monitoring**: Discussion focused on ensuring the reliability of data collected through IoT devices and sensors for environmental health surveillance, emphasizing the need for standardized collection methods and unified regulatory frameworks.

– **AI’s dual role in healthcare – benefits versus risks**: Participants explored how AI can enhance healthcare delivery and environmental monitoring while raising concerns about algorithmic bias, transparency, and the potential for governments to misuse data for discriminatory resource allocation.

– **Integration of environmental and health data for climate resilience**: Speakers emphasized the WHO mandate that health issues are integral to climate change, discussing how internet-enabled systems can support early warning systems, disease surveillance, and resource allocation during environmental crises.

– **Balancing technological advancement with human-centered care**: The discussion addressed concerns about maintaining empathy and compassionate patient care while leveraging AI-driven healthcare solutions, with speakers noting that technology should complement rather than replace human connection.

## Overall Purpose:

The discussion aimed to explore how internet technologies, data systems, and AI can be leveraged to build resilience in both environmental and health challenges, while addressing the risks and inequities these technologies may introduce. The session was part of the Internet Governance Forum’s Dynamic Coalition on Data-Driven Health Technologies.

## Overall Tone:

The discussion maintained a collaborative and constructive tone throughout, with speakers sharing practical experiences and challenges from diverse global perspectives. While acknowledging significant obstacles – particularly around digital divides and potential misuse of technology – the overall tone remained optimistic about technology’s potential to improve health and environmental outcomes. The conversation was academic yet accessible, with participants building on each other’s points and offering complementary perspectives rather than conflicting viewpoints.

Speakers

**Speakers from the provided list:**

– **J Amado Espinosa L** – Veteran in medical informatics, founder of Medicist, key figure in digital health reform in Latin America

– **Yao Amevi A. Sossou** – Internet governance advocate and youth mobilizer from Benin, member of the We the Internet coalition

– **Audience** – Marcelo Fornasin from Oswaldo Cruz Foundation Brazil, researcher in public health

– **Jorn Erbguth** – Session co-moderator

– **Henrietta Ampofo** – Medical doctor with strong environmental and health advocacy background, former focal point of UNEP’s children and youth major group

– **Frederic Cohen** – Data-driven governance advocate with expertise in IGF and WSIS

– **June Parris** – Retired specialist nurse in primary care mental health, former MAG member at UN and Civicus, active ISOC and Civil Society health initiatives member from Barbados

– **Amali De Silva-Mitchell** – Founder of the Dynamic Coalition on Data-Driven Health Technologies, session co-moderator

– **Joao Rocha Gomes** – Online moderator, medical professional

– **Alessandro Berioni** – Medical doctor, chair of the Young Working Group of the World Federation of Public Health Associations

– **Houda Chihi** – Senior researcher in wireless and green communication from Tunisia, PhD in telecommunications

– **Jason Millar** – Environmental professional from Barbados

**Additional speakers:**

None identified beyond the provided speakers names list.

# Leveraging the Internet for Environment and Health Resilience: A Comprehensive Discussion Report

## Executive Summary

This session at the Internet Governance Forum in Norway examined the critical intersection of digital technologies, environmental health monitoring, and healthcare resilience. Co-moderated by Jorn Erbguth and members of the Dynamic Coalition on Data-Driven Health Technologies, the discussion brought together diverse stakeholders from across the globe to explore how internet-enabled systems can enhance public health whilst addressing the inherent risks and inequities these technologies may introduce.

The session opened with Amali De Silva-Mitchell’s call for “thinking globally and integrated,” emphasizing that the WHO has mandated health matters as an integral part of climate change issues. This framework set the stage for a comprehensive exploration of how digital technologies present both unprecedented opportunities and significant challenges for environmental health monitoring, disease surveillance, and healthcare delivery.

Jorn Erbguth introduced the central theme of internet connectivity as a “double-edged sword” in healthcare, providing specific examples of how the same technologies that enabled telemedicine during COVID-19 also created new vulnerabilities to cyber attacks that could disrupt clinical decisions and supply chains.

## Key Thematic Areas

### The Double-Edged Nature of Digital Health Technologies

Jorn Erbguth established the foundational framework for the discussion by highlighting how internet connectivity creates both opportunities and risks in healthcare. He noted that while digital technologies enabled crucial healthcare delivery during the pandemic, they simultaneously made healthcare systems vulnerable to cyber attacks that could affect clinical decisions and supply chains.

This duality was reinforced throughout the session, with speakers consistently acknowledging that digital health solutions offer transformative potential while introducing new forms of risk and inequality. The challenge, as articulated by multiple participants, lies in maximizing benefits while mitigating these inherent risks.

### Regional Perspectives on Digital Health Implementation

#### Caribbean Challenges and Opportunities

June Parris, a retired specialist nurse in primary care mental health and former MAG member from Barbados, provided detailed insights into Caribbean healthcare challenges. She emphasized that “we are in a developing world and we have all these problems… We have the natural disasters, we have sargassum weed” that create ongoing disruptions to healthcare delivery.

Jason Millar, speaking as an environmental professional about Caribbean challenges, articulated the constraints of external dependency: “Any funding agency that targets us for aid will usually make us an offer, but at the same time, that also will come with terms and conditions or a set of constraining factors that will limit the actual potential to maybe fully address an issue in a way that is fully beneficial for us.”

Millar provided specific examples of environmental health challenges facing Barbados, including Sahara dust affecting respiratory health, sargassum seaweed creating coastal health issues, Hurricane Beryl’s recent impacts, and agricultural pesticide concerns. These concrete examples illustrated how environmental and health challenges intersect in small island developing states.

#### African Perspectives on Data-Driven Health Solutions

Henrietta Ampofo, a medical doctor speaking from the AMNET conference in Dakar, presented practical examples of successful data integration in African contexts. She described malaria modeling projects that use climate data to predict disease patterns and allocate resources more effectively, demonstrating how environmental variables can be integrated into health planning to create more responsive healthcare systems.

Her examples showed that despite connectivity challenges, innovative approaches can overcome some infrastructure limitations and create effective data-driven health solutions even in resource-constrained environments.

### Digital Divide and Accessibility Barriers

Alessandro Berioni, chair of the Young Working Group of the World Federation of Public Health Associations, highlighted that “only two thirds of the global population are online and have access to internet and 2.6 billion are not achieving actually connection.” This statistic provided crucial context for understanding the scale of accessibility challenges facing digital health implementation.

The digital divide emerged as a universal challenge across all regions represented. June Parris noted that economic barriers make it difficult for Caribbean countries to keep up with developed nations’ health technology, while the cost of internet access and maintenance creates substantial barriers where healthcare systems already struggle with resource constraints.

### Trust, Cultural Barriers, and Community Engagement

Yao Amevi A. Sossou provided compelling research findings that challenged assumptions about technology adoption: “Most of the patients I interviewed during the research they didn’t trust on the solutions and even the doctors those that use the platform they confirmed that none of their patients are using the app.”

This insight revealed that technical solutions alone are insufficient without addressing fundamental trust issues. Sossou explained that patients often prefer self-medication over formal healthcare due to mistrust of healthcare systems, and this mistrust extends to digital health tools. The lack of awareness about available digital health solutions compounds these challenges.

June Parris acknowledged cultural resistance to change in island communities, emphasizing that healthcare professionals must create empathy with patients to build trust. She stressed that technology implementation requires careful attention to human relationships and cultural sensitivity.

### AI Integration and Algorithmic Bias Concerns

The role of artificial intelligence generated nuanced discussion about both opportunities and risks. Jorn Erbguth presented a thought-provoking warning: “AI can either propose optimal care or be used by governments or industry to triage healthcare according to criteria, quietly determining who receives high-cost therapies and who is excluded.” He emphasized that “these inequities will not be transparent.”

To illustrate this concern, Erbguth cited specific funding disparities: breast cancer research receives significantly more funding than prostate cancer research despite similar incidence and mortality rates, demonstrating how existing biases can be perpetuated or amplified through algorithmic systems.

Alessandro Berioni highlighted a fundamental structural problem: “The algorithms are mostly based on engagement drive. So they’re engagement-driven algorithms rather than value-driven algorithms.” He called for a renewed digital social contract to put people and planet before profit and engagement algorithms.

Interestingly, Erbguth also presented counterintuitive research findings: “Studies have shown that people tend to see more empathy in AI than in human doctors. Human doctors are often stressed under time pressure, and sometimes they don’t act with the empathy we would like them to act with.” This observation sparked discussion about how technology might complement rather than replace human care.

### Cyber Sustainability and Data Governance

Houda Chihi, a senior researcher in wireless and green communication from Tunisia with a PhD in telecommunications, introduced the innovative concept of “cyber sustainability” – combining cybersecurity practices with environmental protection. This approach recognizes that cybersecurity measures must be integrated with sustainability principles to create comprehensive protection for both data and environmental health.

Chihi emphasized the importance of testing and validation before deploying healthcare solutions, noting that the reliability of environmental health data is crucial for effective public health responses. She advocated for collaboration between technical communities, academia, and medical experts to ensure solutions meet both technical and clinical requirements.

### Environmental Health Monitoring and Technology Integration

Joao Rocha Gomes presented specific examples of internet-enabled environmental health monitoring, including air quality mapping initiatives and early warning systems for climate-related health threats. His presentation highlighted how IoT devices and sensors can monitor environmental factors affecting health, though he emphasized the need for proper validation and integration with existing health systems.

J Amado Espinosa L advocated for integrating environmental variables into personal health records, suggesting that individual health management should incorporate broader environmental context to enable more personalized and environmentally-informed healthcare delivery.

## Areas of Strong Consensus

### Universal Challenge of Digital Divide

Multiple speakers from different regions achieved strong consensus that the digital divide creates significant barriers to healthcare access. This consensus was particularly notable because it emerged from speakers representing different geographic regions and professional backgrounds, suggesting these challenges require coordinated global responses.

### Need for Human-Centered Approaches

Despite disagreements about AI’s role, speakers agreed that technology should complement rather than replace human empathy in healthcare. There was clear consensus that healthcare professionals must maintain empathy with patients while educating themselves about emerging technologies.

### Importance of Cultural Appropriateness

Speakers agreed that digital health solutions must be designed with community input, cultural considerations, and local context in mind. This consensus emphasized the need for locally integrated solutions rather than one-size-fits-all approaches.

## Key Areas of Disagreement

### Role of AI in Healthcare Empathy

An unexpected disagreement emerged regarding AI’s capacity for empathetic care. Jorn Erbguth suggested that studies show people perceive more empathy in AI than in stressed human doctors, while other speakers emphasized the irreplaceable importance of human empathy and genuine patient connection.

### Primary Implementation Barriers

Speakers showed different emphases regarding the primary barriers to digital health adoption. June Parris focused on economic and infrastructure barriers, Yao Sossou emphasized cultural mistrust and awareness issues, while Alessandro Berioni highlighted the global digital divide as the fundamental challenge.

### Governance Approaches

While speakers agreed on the need for better governance of digital health solutions, they disagreed on approaches. Some emphasized global frameworks, others focused on regional policies, while technical speakers emphasized the importance of testing and validation protocols.

## Critical Insights and Unresolved Issues

The discussion identified several critical unresolved issues requiring further attention. Establishing unified regulatory mechanisms for health data collection across different regions remains challenging, particularly given varying national priorities and regulatory frameworks.

The question of balancing AI-driven healthcare efficiency with essential human empathy requires ongoing exploration, especially as healthcare systems face increasing resource pressures.

Fundamental affordability barriers that make digital health solutions inaccessible to low-income populations need innovative solutions, including sustainable funding models that don’t come with restrictive external constraints.

## Q&A Highlights and Community Engagement

A particularly insightful question from IGF Ghana addressed how nurses can balance AI integration with maintaining empathy in patient care. This prompted detailed responses from multiple speakers about the complementary role of technology in healthcare delivery.

The interactive discussion revealed that successful digital health implementation requires moving beyond purely technical solutions to embrace community engagement and integrated governance frameworks that prioritize equity and sustainability.

## Recommendations and Next Steps

The session concluded with concrete action items. Participants were encouraged to join the Dynamic Coalition on Data-Driven Health Technologies and access published documents on the IGF homepage. An upcoming hackathon on “Shaping the Future of Health” was announced for July 2nd, with a global call for AI-powered social innovation ideas to be launched in late July.

Follow-up sessions were planned, including continued discussion at WSIS and the World Federation of Public Health Associations conference in Cape Town on September 26th.

## Conclusion

This comprehensive discussion revealed that leveraging the internet for environment and health resilience requires careful navigation of complex technical, social, and ethical challenges. The session demonstrated that while digital technologies offer unprecedented opportunities for environmental health monitoring and healthcare delivery, successful implementation requires addressing fundamental issues of equity, trust, cultural appropriateness, and governance.

The strong consensus around key challenges provides a foundation for collaborative action, while the unresolved issues around regulatory frameworks, sustainable funding, and algorithmic accountability require continued multi-stakeholder engagement. As participants work toward the renewed digital social contract advocated during the session, the insights provide valuable guidance for ensuring that internet-enabled health and environmental solutions truly serve the goal of building resilience for all, rather than perpetuating existing inequities or creating new forms of digital exclusion.

The path forward requires sustained collaboration between technical communities, healthcare professionals, policymakers, and communities to ensure that digital health innovations prioritize people and planet over profit, as emphasized throughout this thought-provoking discussion.

Jorn Erbguth: I guess we are live now. Welcome to this session, Leveraging the Internet in Environment and Health Resilience. And I would like to also welcome Amali, who will be co-moderating. She should be online here. Do we see her? Okay, here. Amali has founded the Dynamic Coalition on Data-Driven Health Technologies and we are proud to be able to moderate this session at the IGF in Norway. And so, be with us. We should now be able to see the next slide. Yes. So, this is our agenda. And Amali, maybe you would like to introduce the agenda?

Amali De Silva-Mitchell: Thank you, Jörn. I will actually pass the online moderation to Dr. Joao Gomes very quickly. But I just want to make a couple of points before this session starts. And I want everybody to think globally and integrated. And when you’re making policy decisions, please think as an integrated policymaking opportunity and especially governance frameworks and so forth. Just want to make this very simple point. The WHO has mandated that the health matters are integral part of climate change issues. And we need to look at that from the perspective of the whole community. So, an ecosystem of services. And this will include public safety, emergency, ambulance, hospitals, doctors and citizens and so forth. So, I just want to make this very simple comment about this importance of integrating our services and how we have a tremendous opportunity with ICTs to help in this enabling of this very important situation of the climate and how humans, plants, animals are going to survive for the future. And we’ll just hand this over now to Joao, please. Joao, please take it from here.

Joao Rocha Gomes: Hello, everyone. Good to see you. I hope you can hear me well in the room. Thank you for the quick introduction. And also, good welcome to L’Irchtrom. I’m not able to be in person with you, but hopefully I can support online as well with the speakers that we’re going to have online. I’ll just make a brief note about the agenda. So, as you can see, projected at the moment as well, we will start with some keynote introductions. We have several speakers that will join us. They are not all part of the Dynamic Coalition on Data-Driven Technologies. So, we have diverse backgrounds of people joining us. Then we will have mostly the participants of this Dynamic Coalition sharing their thoughts on this topic on a lightning round. So, we will have shorter times for each one assigned. We are also mindful of the time. And we will have everyone speaking and sharing their thoughts on that. And then I will bridge into a discussion section where the room will be open for comments, questions, or ideas from anyone either online, which I will take care of and collect and then share to the room, or in the room itself. And Jørn will bridge the questions to the speakers and make sure that the comments have a good grounding and a good place for them to be shared. And without further notice, I will pass now the word back to the room, to Jørn, so that we can proceed with the agenda.

Jorn Erbguth: Thank you, Jørn. I would like to take a quick look at our topic at resilience, vulnerability, and control in the context of leveraging the Internet in environment and health resilience. Of course, we have seen that connectivity boosts resilience in the IGF. Sorry, during COVID, we have seen that the Internet gave us a possibility to continue lots of activities, including healthcare, telemedicine, from remote diagnostics to robot-assisted surgery. The Internet kept services running when COVID hit, when natural disasters occur, when we have pandemics or political unrest, and that block physical access. But of course, the total dependence on the network also makes outages instantly disruptive for clinical decisions, supply chains, and payment systems. It also makes hospitals vulnerable to cyber attacks, as we all know. When we go a step further with large-scale health data collection, it’s also a double-edged sword, meaning that population-wide data sets can strengthen surveillance, early warning, and resource allocation concerning diseases, yet the same data can establish new inequities or hardwire old ones. Visible, for instance, in the persistence funding skewed towards breast cancer research over prostate cancer studies. Just one example I would like to point out in the next slide. When it comes to AI, this double-edged sword will even further sharpen. AI can either propose optimal care or be used by governments or industry to triage healthcare according to OPAC criteria, quietly determining who receives high-cost therapies and who is excluded. So the internet, data, and AI can strengthen healthcare resilience and resilience to environmental challenges, but they also introduce not only additional technical vulnerabilities, but more worrying still, a hard-to-detect potential for government abuse. So let’s take a look at some statistics. Here we see that the incidence of breast cancer and prostate cancer is about the same. The mortality is also about the same, but the funding is far from the same. We see the government funding is almost only half, and the philanthropic funding is even much less than half. This is just one example, and imagine that the data and AI can be used or abused by governments to focus on specific population groups where they want to allocate more funding, and the data will make it possible to analyze exactly where such funding has an effect on increasing inequities. And this, of course, is a risk that we face, and these inequities will not be transparent. They will not be visible because those decisions can be made in the dark and can be hidden behind decisions that seem to be neutral. So just as a short introduction where there are hidden risks, and with this I don’t want to extend my time further and give back to Jean to moderate the next keynotes.

Joao Rocha Gomes: Thank you. Thank you so much, Bjorn. I will move on very quickly now to June Parris. I believe she’ll be in the room with you all. She’s a retired specialist nurse in primary care mental health, a former MAG member at UN and Civicus, and an active ISOC and Civil Society health initiatives member from Barbados. So, June, if you are with us in the room, I will now give you the word.

June Parris: Good evening. Good afternoon to everyone in the room and everyone online. My name is June Parris. As he mentioned, I am retired, but I have been involved with IT for a number of years as a nurse. I worked in Europe and all health care in Europe, but I would like to say in the UK. It’s connected to the internet and connected to health care systems. So I’ve had those experiences working in a developed country, and then I retired to Barbados. It wasn’t the same when I got there. It’s not easy for them to keep up with what is happening in the first world. My colleague has alluded to some of the problems that we would have faced, mainly economics. Catching up is difficult, and we have to rely on expertise from overseas, Europe and North America. We also have to rely on experts coming in to give advice, and we also rely a lot on funding. How far does this funding go? In the Caribbean, we suffer from natural disasters. So we take one step forward and two steps backward most of the time. Therefore, any systems that are put in place are funded by experts and expertises, people from outside and North Americans and Europeans. We have to keep repeating this funding and spreading the resources out to accommodate all the changes that we would want to make. As you can see, that would be very difficult with limited resources. So apart from natural disasters, there’s also a climate of culture. Do we really want change? Is it easy to make changes in a culture, in an island culture, where people have islands? The way we think in the islands is not the same as the way we think in Europe, having the experience working in Europe. Basically, we don’t really think outside the box. So, there’s also other problems, namely the cost of the Internet, access to the Internet, maintenance of Internet systems, and basic use of the Internet. We are in a developing world and we have all these problems, you know. We have, as I mentioned before, we have the natural disasters, we have sargassum weed. Have you ever heard of sargassum? That is creating absolute problems on the island. Health as well as food shortages in terms of fishing. We had a natural disaster a few months ago where fishing boats were destroyed and they were unable to fish, to go fishing for a while. Therefore, the cost of living went up, health problems increased, and then, you know, it all reflects back on finances and economics. Okay, we’re trying, we’re making changes, we’re trying to improve, we’re employing experts, we’re receiving funding, lots of funding, but we have to put it to good use. Therefore, where does the Internet come in? How can we afford to keep up to date with all the other places in the world that are way ahead of us? So, I’m thinking that we need to educate. Education is very important. We need good use of resources, we need to improve our facilities, and we need to think ahead and plan ahead by having more research on the systems, trying to understand how to deal with these systems, and to put Internet use in good use, I would say. So, this is, I think I’m going to wrap up now. I think I’ve said everything that I want to say, and my other colleagues will add to it.

Joao Rocha Gomes: Thank you so much, June, and I believe this is a great segue as well to Jason Millar, which we have online speaking as well on this topic. I will now pass on the word to him, and I believe you can follow up on your words as well. Thank you.

Jason Millar: Hi, good morning, everyone. I hope you can hear me. So, as June would have just mentioned, we in the Caribbean have a number of not entirely unique, but definitely very in our face challenges. We depend very heavily on external resources, which means that any funding agency that targets us for aid will usually make us an offer, but at the same time, that also will come with terms and conditions or a set of constraining factors that will limit the actual potential to maybe fully address an issue in a way that is fully beneficial for us based on some of the boundaries that were put in place. We have many challenges as it relates to air quality because we get affected by things like the Sahara, which is a fairly constant flow across the Atlantic. It’s a very important and natural process, but certain aspects of these processes have been enhanced by climate change. For example, as June mentioned, the intrusion of seaweed, which continues to get worse within the Caribbean region. We also have the formation of tropical systems, such as Hurricane Beryl, which did significant damage to us, even though it didn’t hit us entirely directly, and as June would have mentioned, destroyed much of our fishing fleet. We also have anthropogenically caused issues within our islands, such as outputs from industrial agricultural processes. Barbados is known for production of sugar, and we have many cane fields which farmers use pesticides and herbicides on to control weeds and that sort of stuff. But because of the permeable nature of our rock that seeps into our groundwater supply, we have a lot of individual challenges that can combine into larger challenges. In seeking external help, we have to depend on the boundaries that are put in place by every funding agency that offers us help, and it may not allow us to fully remediate any of the issues. We also have problems with fires. There’s a culture of burning in Barbados, for example, where despite having laws to regulate the hours within which you can burn in the areas in which you can burn, vast sections of open lots and other areas where there are no physical buildings are burned yearly because that’s the culture. That’s the past tense, and dissemination of information is difficult in this age because of things like the rise of the influencer as opposed to cultures moving more towards embracing information from specific state sources. The internet has been used to a point by the state. I’m using Barbados as an example, but not enough to say that all of the potential for its use has been manifested. We could have more information about proper waste disposal sites to help with our waste issue. Dumping is a very large issue in Barbados as well. All of these things affect the soil quality due to the permeable nature of our rock, our groundwater systems, our baths, and that is within a very small surface area. So, the potential for the internet to regulate public perception is very strong in Barbados, and it has not been used as well as it could in the future. This could be changed in a more meaningful way. Sorry, I’m losing signal. Yes, it could be leveraged in a more meaningful way to make sure that people are more aware of certain aspects of governance within Barbados and policies that have been made to protect the public as opposed to being used to spread misinformation about these same things. I think I will wrap up there.

Joao Rocha Gomes: Thank you so much, Jason. I didn’t properly introduce you, but I believe it was clear from your speech that you’re working in the context of Barbados as well as an environmental professional. It was very clear that also the problems that you shared are not just one-sided or at least one-viewed, because June Perry had also mentioned many of the aspects that were voiced and echoed, but definitely you added a different perspective to the topic. So, thank you for that. Without further ado as well, I will also introduce Henrietta Mpofo. She’s a medical doctor with a strong environmental and health advocacy background and a formal focal point of UNEP’s children and youth major group. So, I will now give you the words, Henrietta. I believe you are with us online. You are muted, Henrietta.

Henrietta Ampofo: Hello. Merci beaucoup. Hi, I’m Dr. Henrietta Mpofo, as rightly introduced. I will just touch on solutions and prospects looking at our topic, environment, health, resilience, and the Internet, and how do these come together. Currently, I’m speaking from Dakar, and I’m at an AMNET conference, Applied Malaria Modelling Conference. It’s an epitome of how these three domains come together to solve problems. Over here, I’m speaking to researchers, and AMNET is being sponsored by the Gates Foundation to empower and equip researchers with skills to be applied in malaria modelling. Now, how does the Internet come in? How does the environment come in? And how do we provide solutions in these spheres? So, for example, right, with the malaria modelling, you can find out at which point in the year you have an increased incidence of malaria, especially from the effects of climate change and the fact that malaria is a vector-borne disease. You may have an increased incidence of malaria during certain seasons. And if you’re able to put in that model and be able to identify the factors that are increasing it, now you are able to, as June mentioned, allocate funding to areas that are in need. You can even subdivide it into populations that are even more susceptible. And so these are the ways by which the Internet can support this, right? Now, most of the modelling, we are using data sets, right? And these data sets are sitting on servers and being accessed through cloud computing. Some of the modelling is done online. And the data sets and the information is available to researchers and interested participants or interested policymakers online. So the Internet now is facilitating the combination of health resilience, just using malaria as an example, to be able to bring out solutions and to be able to implement interventions in a timely manner. If we are able to now… have this data broken down and you realize that a particular population, maybe children under five are more susceptible, that can also influence, you know, vaccine interventions, right? The fact that we think that vaccines, malaria vaccines, should be given to them. And so in all of this, the internet is very integral in the area of climate, in the area of environmental health, in the area of health resilience. And I would like to end here. I’m sure there are other people that can share more wonderful experiences, but we must always remember that internet governance is integral. It supports the infrastructure on which we can not just identify problems, not just offer solutions, but also disseminate solutions, right? We talk about integrity of the data. We are talking about cyber security. How safe is it? How are we sure that the data has not been tampered with? How accessible is it, right? Different parts of the world in Africa, where we have connectivity issues. So all these things come to play when we want to

Joao Rocha Gomes: use the internet for good. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Henrietta. And also best of luck of voicing these concerns in Dakar, where you are at the moment. Thank you for finding the time as well to join. And I will also now pass the word to Alessandro Berioni. He is, just like Henrietta, a medical doctor. And he’s currently a chair of the Young Working Group of the World Federation of Public Health Associations. And I believe you have a presentation to share. So let’s see if that also works out with you sharing the screen. Feel free. Thank you so much, Joao, for the

Alessandro Berioni: kind introduction. And I hope you can see my presentation. Can you? Yes, it’s still loading. We see a WhatsApp conversation. Okay, that’s not good. Okay, that’s not good. Let me try. I will show now. Try again. Can you see it now? Can you now? Not yet. I know it. Yes. Okay, greatly. Hello, everyone. Good morning. Thanks for the invitation. And I hope you are doing fresh in Oslo. Here is boiling in Rome. As Joao said, I’m the chair of the Young WFPHA. Young, yes, WFPHA. It’s the working group of the World Federation of Public Health Associations. I wanted to start addressing my presentation with this title that I think resonates quite well with the topic that you were mentioning. So health resilience, internet in the environment, and health resilience. So from the public health perspective, I wanted to center this discussion by a quick keynote speech on the web and well-being. So how the net can actually enhance and threat the potential well-being and the public health in general in this really interesting era that we are living nowadays. So I will go with a quick introduction and explain some public health and the internet crossplay, some challenges and priority solutions. So introducing myself from start, I’ve been working with AI and I co-founded the Italian Association in Medicine, working for WHO, Young Innovators for Quality of Care group, which was mostly practical, innovating quality of care challenges, and finally working with the World Federation of Public Health Associations. So there is a common thread around health and innovation, which I’m really passionate about. So I will go first, what is the current main activities and sorry, the main of the internet in public health advancement and resilience, I would say. So most of the speaker has already said it and I would like to echo with what they’ve already said, but mostly the internet is announcing, I would say, early warning system for most of the concerns, either climate made, human made or so on. The remote care for the underserved areas and for health communication, either for public health messages, information and education. There is a but, because as many of the speakers have discussed previously, not everyone is addressed. There is a huge still digital divide that is a main concern in the public health field. Indeed, only one third of the global population, only two thirds of the global population are online and have access to internet and 2.6 billion are not achieving actually connection because of the situation they’re living in rural areas. So I would like also to remark the last point, the one on youth, which is the most connected people. So penetration rate of 72% compared to the general population. So as a youth group, I would like to remark that and understand how the youth people can also address the best and use at this best the internet, the web and all the digital tools that we are daily exposed to. There are some problems, as I said before, some challenges, which is again the digital divide, not everyone has access to it. For example, many of the people we are collaborating with in Africa are not always available or have chances to connect to internet. There is a huge problem with the misinformation as we also with COVID, with the vaccination situation, with political situation, as we are seeing as well, and ethical data governance in terms of transparency, accountability of data. Again, with all the neural networks, we cannot most of the time track how the data is going. So this is very interesting to understand. And I will move to the next slide, which is one of my, I will say core slides. I’ve been reading recently this book, which I really recommend is Nexus from Yuval Noah Rari. And there are three core parts that I wanted to share with you today, because they’re really also resonating with the main components of health. First of all, the fact that nowadays we’re not living with passive informative system, but active tools, again, neural networks. So we know we have a re-elaborated source of information, and we don’t know what is all this elaboration going through. Secondly, the algorithms are mostly based on engagement drive. So they’re engagement driven algorithms rather than value driven algorithms. And this is a key point we need to address. This is a main challenge. I personally think so in terms of all the private generation of all the algorithms. And finally, we need to restructure global governance to digital global governance as the UN is doing, for example, with the global digital compact, with the AI governational body. But this is something that needs to be also brought to the national level to enhance the regulation around all these tools. So what we are doing as a group of young WFPCA, the World Federation of Public Health Association, we have some priority actions, including the designing digital tools for equity and inclusivity, keeping this in mind, promote digital governance through frameworks and quality standards, of course, advocating a civil society, as we are not a governmental body. And finally, foster multi-sector collaboration across health, environment, tech, education, and so on. These are some of the achievements we have had. We do lots of education and advocacy around the UNGA, World Health Assembly, and many others, collaborations with the Council of Europe and so on. Again, one of our critical pillars is the capacity building. So allowing people to have digital literacy and giving them the ability to use the digital tools meaningfully, and also finding a way to train either the communities, the population, and the health workers through the digital tools that we advocate for. These are some of the conferences we organized around. If you want to participate, the next one is going to be in September 26th in Cape Town. Thank you, Arko, for registering. And another point I wanted to address is how internet is allowing people to co-create solutions, aggregating communities, and civil societies, and youth people, allowing a better participation to these platforms, let’s say. So I’m about to end. I just want to remark the point of the innovation ecosystem that is our strategy for addressing the current challenges in this internet sustainability current situation. The first point is announcing bottom-up innovation to address these public health challenges, which are big, big challenges and are lacking also of funds, not only of innovation lately. And secondly, structure this kind of solid platform framework that can allow this innovation process to go through all these repeated steps in order to get grounded on the specific implementation, let’s say, country or so. So I’m bringing you two examples. One is the hackathon we’re organizing for July 2nd. In case you would like to participate, this is something that we are moving forward, shaping the future of health with several partners. And then we are launching in late July call for global ideas on social innovation, mostly AI-powered social innovation, to showcase how public health can be advanced through the cutting-edge technology again. So just to remark all these points, we would like to call for an internet that is more solid, that can provide early action, and that can also be a shared resilience worldwide. So we are put at the forefront. This is our take-home message. So youth are at the forefront for the internet and the web, let’s say, digital era. Secondly, innovation is essential in public health. And also we claim for a renewed digital social contract to put people at planet first before profit and the engagement algorithms, let’s call it so. And nothing, I’m sorry for running a bit late, one minute or two. So yeah, if you want to connect with me or with the Young WPK, these are the contacts. Thank you, Joao, for the moderation. And back to you.

Joao Rocha Gomes: Thank you so much, Alessandro. And not just for the thoughts, but also for the actions that the events are organizing, even the book recommendations that you set in here. I would probably ask you later for you to forward the presentation so that we can share these resources and have them statically available. Thank you. And also, as you also mentioned, taking into account that we are already slightly over time, and since we don’t want to overrun the session, I will now bring the word back to the room. I believe we have Amado Spinoza in the room for a shorter round of Amado is a veteran in medical informatics and founder of Medicist, a key figure in digital health reform in Latin America. So, Amado, you have the word now.

J Amado Espinosa L: Thanks, Yao, and thank you very much for the opportunity to participate. Well, right now the main purpose of this digital coalition from IGF is mainly to introduce the community, how can you participate in a multi-stakeholder model in order to integrate all these new trends in technology like AI or quantum computing into the healthcare environment and healthcare services. Right now our focus, as Amali mentioned at the very beginning, is to approach the social predisponent factors of health which are pretty much related to the agentic resources or tools that we do already have from different training models already available at the market in where we are trying to provide the society with the proper resources in order to manage their own well-being and their own health. Then the new trend is right now not only to prevent but also to help the society how to improve their health and to become partners of this healthcare responsibility which is one of the SDGs. I encourage everybody of you from the technical community to join our efforts in order to integrate these environmental medicine variables that are currently measured in different environments into the social determinants of health that are also very well observed and included into these agentic models and also the technical community who are really deeply engaged in the neurological basis of behavior which are already incorporated into this new computing theory in terms of how to really take advantage of AI into the healthcare arena. I thank you everybody for your interest and please join our DC. You can see all our documents already published into the IGF home page and we will be very happy to share with you our ideas initiatives and goals for the next coming five to ten years. Thank you very much.

Joao Rocha Gomes: Thank you so much Amado and I think I’ll do exactly the same which is to add some of these recommendations of events and even actions that the DC is taking on to the session reports where then everyone can follow up and even join if wanted. I will now see in the room I also saw earlier Yao Amevisusu sitting also on the table with you. I will give him the word now. He’s an internet governance advocate and a youth mobilizer from Benin, member of the We the Internet coalition.

Yao Amevi A. Sossou: Thank you very much. Thank you very much Yao. On this topic I want to share perspective on the topic from a research I run last year. Starting from last year until this year in Benin regarding the gap between the promised health and the reality for people who are in need of the health solutions. During my research I conducted in Benin I found out the actually gap between the need of the people and the proposed appropriate solution that are made available to them on a daily basis. Let’s take two example of a young 18 year old student who usually rely on self-medications when he’s sick or go to a local pharmacy because of long waiting time at the hospitals or maybe because of loss of trust in the medical professionals and they seem to look for this care for them is like a last resort so they don’t trust them. And let’s take a case of a father who is also a social worker who have less income who views this financial medical taking care of their family as a big financial hurdles. So the first reflex in this case is to look for traditional medications and instead of going to the formal health care system which they found very expensive for them and these are not just unique stories. They represent the daily reality of countless families that I met during my research and for them resilience is about survival, is about also treatable illness like malaria when the cost is will be bearable for them. For most of them the cost of those treatment is almost a monthly income, a monthly salary for the whole family. So those are issues I encountered and also saw there were potential medical help available on the ground but there were lack of awareness about those solutions and those solutions when even on the ground the professionals they are not using the solution available and basically most of it what I found out is that most of the patients I interviewed during the research they didn’t trust on the solutions and even the doctors those that use the platform they confirmed that none of their patients are using the app and basically most of the barriers is deeply rooted on the lack of the human aspect of it. There is a profound lack of awareness and deeply seated mistrust in the health care system extending to it on the digital tools also and secondly there is a accessibility gap in the app where most of the people I interviewed are not really proficient in the official language French that they use so there’s a barrier also in terms of lack of a low literacy level. Thirdly affordability remains a big challenge, a big hurdle and this kind of app can’t help people if they are not really offering alternative solutions to the end user to have affordable health care so we must design with the community in mind. The people we are designing for we may design with them and co-create user-centered solutions that are culturally relevant and integrate local languages and local solutions for them. We must build a trust alongside digital platform and that they need to be integrated with the public health education and awareness campaign to show the value and reliability on just solutions. We must also make sure that the solutions are affordable especially during time of crisis and the cost to access those so the digital health solution made available must be very flexible in terms of payment and also make sure that they offer insurance opportunity to the end users on the ground. So those are the input I wanted to bring on board to this topic. Thank you very much. Heel back to you Joao.

Joao Rocha Gomes: Thank you so much Yael for giving us direct insights from the source as well on what are the issues that you see and sending some potential solutions or directions even so thank you once again. I will now give the word to Uda Kihi online with a senior researcher in wireless and green communication from Tunisia and PhD in telecommunications. I believe you will have slides to share with us so also feel free to go ahead and share the screen. Thank you so much

Houda Chihi: Joao. Could you hear me? Yes. Okay thank you. Hello everyone. Thank you so much Joao for this great introduction. I want also to thank all the participants for your attending our session and let me share my screen. Hope that it will be visible. Okay. Is it visible? Is it okay? Just I put it more bigger. I put it much bigger. Okay so thank you so much. So my today’s talk will be about cyber security for environment sustainability. Let’s start by the roadmap of my talk. I will start by the context and the challenges to understand more about the interests of this synergy between sustainability and cyber security. After that I will explain more the principle of this synergy together with challenges, best practices and I will sum up of my talk about the key address and key point of my talk. So what are the challenges? So today’s and nowadays due to rise of the problem of climate change we are obliged to exploit ICT for measuring green gas emission. So we speak about data sovereignty and ICT for a CO2 emission and measurement and we speak about new metrics for measuring the energy conceptions. So let’s say that ICT is integrated and it is based in data collection of energy. But here we have a threat of attacks, the rise of attacks in energy platforms if there is a lack of cyber security tools. So another challenge is the rise of the use of, we speak nowadays of the revolution of artificial intelligence and machine learning. So we speak about misinformation, fake profiles and we have also a great emerging of a new generative of artificial intelligence. So there is a threat of cyber security regarding the climate change. We will have different outcomes if there is a possibility of intrusion of any energy platforms or any energy algorithms. So this is another challenge is related to data energy theft, which is a risk of reputation of companies and sustainability in general. OK, so let’s understand a bit what is a cyber sustainability principle that we will explain in my talk today. So it is the combination between cyber security and other principles related to protection of society, environment and governance. Now we speak about a new protection of the planet and environment, which leads if it is done in an efficient way, we will speak about sustainability. And with the introduction of cyber security recommendation, we will have another principle, which is cyber sustainability. So what is that principle about? It is about the combination between the different practices of cyber security together with carbon footprint minimization or energy consumption minimization. So in this way, we will speak about a balance or tradeoff between sustainable development goals, satisfaction, which leads to sustainability together with cyber security practices. So in this way, we will have an alignment between cyber security and green tech. So it is a way of redirection of tech for both cyber security, our security of data protection, privacy, human rights protection, together with planet protection, environment, sustainability. So here we speak about a new concept, which is based in protection, which is based on specific policies to speak about cyber sustainability. We have different pillars to respect in the way to protect the environment together with data protection or human rights protection too. It is based on specific policies and recommendations. It is a redirection for people protection, whether it is related to planet, environment, health, health care or human rights in terms of data protection and information protection and tech solution, which will be green together with respect of cyber security, which leads to protection of human rights. And we speak about the green policies redirected or some tech for a human. So here it is a way of redirection for cyber security, for good, for both sustainability together with human rights protection. Simple practices for energy, we can use, for example, Internet of Things or sensors for energy monitoring and security. Best practices is to monitor the functionality and operability of these sensors in a safe way. Also, another recommendation is related to redirection or empowering research labs to focus more in this synergy between sustainability together with a security intersection. Here, we need a collaboration between different stakeholders and a mindset shift together with capacity building in both green practices and cyber security, which calls all developers, academia, environmental experts. We need all of them to sit in the table and collaborate and to state specific rules that are redirected for the benefit of the planet and human rights at the same time. So to not waste a lot of time, let’s go to the best practices and tips for sustainable cyber security. It’s in general based in three pillars. It is a specific environment responsibility. It is a social ethics. It is a technology resilience. It means that it is a redirection for technology for both green practices and together with respect and control of a specific ethics to protect the human rights and planet sustainability at the same time. Okay, let’s speak now more precisely in the impact of artificial intelligence because nowadays, artificial intelligence and machine learning are integrated everywhere, whether in cyber security or sustainability. But if we let them running with different kinds of data, we’ll have a bad outcome or we’ll have a different outcome that will be a threat of our lives and a threat of the planet. But here, it should be the use of artificial intelligence algorithm should be based in a specific quality of data sets together with if we conclude or remark of any threat or risk of bias or discrimination of specific information or bad outcome. We’ll have to do a specific audits and tests and adding the specific data that we need that lead us to have a good outcome. So, another good practices is based in the concept of the combination between the safety concept, sustainability together with cyber security, which is based in first of all, we need to do to have a simple practices such as data backup to not in case of we have any threat or risk. We don’t have a waste of all of data, but if we keep them and do the necessary backups and storage, there is no waste for us. There is no threat of reputation. We lost our data and repeat again the collection and waste the data and costs.

Joao Rocha Gomes: Excuse me, we have to move forward.

Houda Chihi: Okay, okay. So, let’s go to these facts. Okay. So, another important thing is to have inspiration from great companies and regulators or standards that are dealing with the problem of cyber security and convince them to state specific rules together for the benefit of the planet such as NIST, ESO, European acts.

Jorn Erbguth: Okay. Thank you very much for your ideas. Yes, I appreciate very much. Joao, please move ahead.

Joao Rocha Gomes: Thank you so much for gatekeeping the time. I always feel like a bad person every time I interrupt someone. So, thank you for doing that role. We definitely need it because our time is short. I will now briefly introduce Frederic as well. Be mindful of the time and please keep the intervention short. Frederic Cohen is a data-driven governance advocate with expertise in IGF and WSIS. So, Frederic, I’ll give you the word now.

Frederic Cohen: Hello, everyone, dear friends, members, and to all the participants. I would like to thank you all for the opportunity to express our consideration for this summit and to all the organizers. This month is a moment of meeting and exchanges as it was promoted by Dessa Boyce on a newsletter with the visit of the Under-Secretary-General Lee, Jr. in France for the Third Ocean Conference, also the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development in Sevilla, and this IGF Summit in Norway. The topic of water is a major issue to protect the planet, dealing with health and sanitation to the people and that engages in combat pollution everywhere. Ecology is impacted by the interaction of humanity with the environment, and mass transfers of an industrialized population make life in danger. It is a forum of openness and inclusivity that is proposed for the international community to assist and support the decision-making that apply for the global economy. Consultation of population at a large scale of calculation is a manner to examine statistics and manage with a solution. The venue is a way to present personalities around the world and transmit information about their will of communication. It was expected to make progress into recognition. This event, that will make date, must be the occasion to remind the work done with the MAG to advance knowledge for prevention and application of the guidelines exposed with the Internet. Publications from UNDESA are an important reference for the discussion. It is supposed that every meeting should be founded by a major vote of the community, but also investment in the private sector and the engagement of member states together. We must demonstrate our commitment to improving communication for global affairs. As major goals for the nation, health, education and climate change are often reminded for the global market as topical investments to develop a fair economy. It is a sector of partnership with philanthropy, where participants can be proud to offer their volunteering. A transparent regulatory framework is needed to define an ambitious achievement in this matter. The future talk will notice the dynamic coalition on data-driven health technologies for this contribution to global effort, and it will be an important interest for the followers

Joao Rocha Gomes: of the initiative. I thank you very much. Thank you so much Frédéric, also for gatekeeping the time. And I will very quickly now bridge into discussion. I’ll just share a medical perspective. I also have some slides on the topic, but I’m also mindful of the time. I will invite everyone to leave their questions already in the chat if you have any. And I will share my screen, and I hope you can see the slides as well. Yeah, perfect. So just a very brief note on something that we are already aware of. Environmental hazards definitely do lead to health emergencies. We have reports stating that both air pollution and water contamination, just as examples, can have obvious implications on health outcomes. And surprisingly, this is a data point that I thought it was interesting to share, that 99% of the world’s population is living in places where the air quality guidelines are not met, the ones set by WHO. And this obviously is a burden. It can lead to conditions such as asthma, stroke, cardiovascular diseases, even cancer. And for water contamination, while we may think that we are already having good results, and we do have 73% of the population having good coverage in a safely and manageable drinking water access, it also means that the other 27% do not have so. And this may lead to diseases. It can be many types of gastroinfections, but also even cancers, for example, in the case of arsenic contamination in waters. And I wanted to bring some examples in here of initiatives that are ongoing or that happened recently that try to focus on these aspects. One of them is Breezometer, which is a mapping initiative that addresses the air quality in real time. And many applications that we currently use already consume the information provided by these tools. So we can see what are the environments where the air quality is better or worse. Then we also have the REACH project in Bangladesh, which would provide alerts to the population based on the quality and potential contamination of the water they were consuming in public wells and also in open systems. And then the SORMAS project in Nigeria and Ghana that was established and that is currently still working, trying to focus on mapping outbreaks of conditions, of diseases, and trying also to provide a response system that works in real time to alert populations, but also healthcare providers. And we know that vulnerability, as we saw based on this project, does not necessarily mean connectivity. So my one advocacy point in this intervention is for us to address the aspects of internet access, digital literacy, and inclusion in the system design, which are often lacking. So equity must be a design principle and not just an afterthought of these tools. And therefore, I really do think that we should pick up on some of these projects and leverage them into policy aligned interventions so that we can replicate what was well done, but also that we learn from the projects that didn’t work so well and try to bridge the gap or to at least solve some of the issues that were raised or found in many of these projects that leads to them not continuing over a bigger lifespan than what the funding allocates for. And without further ado, I would like to then invite questions from the audience. So I know that in the room you may have people that have questions. I believe you can raise the end and a microphone will be provided to you. And I will also look into the online chats to see if there’s any questions popping up. Please state your name and affiliation just for context before any intervention. Even if you don’t have questions, share your ideas and comments. Thank you so much.

Jorn Erbguth: Do we have some questions in the room? Please show hand. Yes. There’s a mic here. You can come. Yeah, please come here to the microphone and speak.

Audience: And please state your name and affiliation. I’m Marcelo Fornasin. I’m from Oswaldo Cruz Foundation Brazil, researcher in public health. Thank you for the congratulations for the interesting interventions we have here. I’d like to ask you about this. When we link the discussion between making the links between health and environment, we see new source of data for environmental health reproduced through Internet of Things. And I’d like to hear from you what you think about the validity of this data. How can we produce and use and evaluate the quality of this data produced by several devices for monitoring environment? And how can we use this data to provide the epidemiological surveillance in healthcare scenarios?

J Amado Espinosa L: Yes. May I? Yes, that’s an important question. And I think we have to double check on the feasibility of this data. Nowadays, as our colleague mentioned, the IoT is specifically dedicated to healthcare is almost in most of the countries already linked to the public health policies. And what we are realizing is it is not only to take care of the public health problems that are already available in place, as you already mentioned, but also how can we really help the population to improve their health? That means if they are having a fitness program, they are trying to compensate chronic diseases. And the environmental variables can play a role in order for them to help to improve this status. It’s very important to integrate those kind of values or those kind of information into their personal health record and provide them with personalized recommendations, personalized guidelines, which through the use of AI and those agentic resources I already mentioned to you are already available in certain applications. The most important step to equate right now is how can we define these guidelines in our own environment? Because it is not the same value which is here, for example, this beautiful country as it is in Mexico or in Panama or in another country, in another region. Then our recommendation is, of course, to join the efforts from the World Health Organization in order to have this data regionalized but included into the different platforms that are already available from the different regions and that we can really provide a personalized recommendation. Thanks.

Jorn Erbguth: You asked about the validity and, of course, this really depends on the type of data. So, if you have measurements about water qualities and, of course, if you have a trust laboratory, this data is quite valid. If you have indirect measurements by IoT devices, often you have to make a lot of assumptions about causes, about measurements that you can not directly measure, but that you can kind of get from direct measurements. Those are based on assumptions and, of course, they run the risk of including certain errors or even political misconceptions.

Yao Amevi A. Sossou: In that front, I would just want to add regarding how we can use those IoT solutions. I think in terms of trust on the solution, I think we need to come up with a unified mechanism. We are working on a mechanism of policies so that the data collected and how they are collected are done in the same way, to build trust on those data. And depending on the regions in the world, there are different methods used, but all in all, coming with unified regulations, regulatory measures, of course, to how we collect the data and scientifically proving the validity of those data, I think that will help build trust on the data, and then also we need to be able to replicate those methods and methodologies. Thank you.

Jorn Erbguth: Do we have comments from the online speakers on this question?

Houda Chihi: Houda has her hand raised. Yes. Okay, thank you so much for this question. So, I want to just add that the source of data collection is very important, and the next thing is the testing phase is very important too, because if we deploy any solution or directed for healthcare, an important thing is to test it before and to judge the outcome. After that, we can commercialize it or we can decline it or just adjust it or retrain and collect new data. And this is a collaborative effort between technical team and medical staff. Thank you.

Jorn Erbguth: Thank you. Are there any further comments from the experts? Otherwise, are there further questions from the room? Do we have questions online, Karel?

Joao Rocha Gomes: Yes, we do have a question online. I can read it out loud, and then I’ll let you add your thoughts on it. The question comes from a representative of IGF Ghana, and it reads, how can nurses balance the benefits of AI-driven healthcare with the essential needs for human empathy and compassionate patient care? I would even say beyond nurses, healthcare professionals as well.

June Parris: Can I say a few words? It’s up to the individual. As a healthcare professional, you should put your job first, but you should care about the patient and empathize and know something about what you’re talking about. The important thing in healthcare, too, is education. We have to have expert patients. The more expert a patient is, the easier the job is. Everything that we’ve said today, the environment, healthcare, internet, natural disasters, it all comes down to one thing, education. The healthcare professional, in particular, that they need to be dedicated to the job and do a good job.

Yao Amevi A. Sossou: I can also add to what you said, Jun, that especially the healthcare professionals, they need to educate themselves on the use of those emerging technologies available. But in their practices, they need to make sure they create more empathy with the patient visiting them. During my research I’ve done in Benin, I noticed that most of the trust issues come from the way they are dealing with the patient, and this creates a bridge of trust between them and their patients. So, creating empathy with the patient, but also educating themselves in how to combine those technologies into their daily practices. So, we are quite effective, I think. Thank you.

Houda Chihi: We have a hand from Huda. Would you like to… Yes. I want to say that any technology, whether it is based in AI or other things, is here to complement and to help us. But empathy is always the first thing that we should provide to any patient to let him accept any medical tool to help him recover very fast. Thank you.

Jorn Erbguth: Thank you. Do we have a further question from the room? I don’t see any from the room. How do… I’m not sure. We don’t have any. Maybe I add to the last question. Studies have shown that people tend to see more empathy in AI than in human doctors. Human doctors are often stressed under time pressure, and sometimes they don’t act with the empathy we would like them to act with. Of course, empathy is not just using the right words, but it’s a lot more. With AI, this is limited to the right words right now. When I look at doctors, I see a lot of doctors that have an issue with this kind of semi-educated patients that have used Google or GPT for their problems and question the authority of the doctor while not really understanding the issue. At the same time, AI can help to provide further explanation to patients. When a patient gets a diagnosis and they have a hard time understanding what it means, it could be provided to answer further questions that they have maybe after the doctor is gone, and they would need further answers, which cannot be given by the health system currently easily.

Joao Rocha Gomes: I will also maybe add a short 30-second point, also aware of the time on this note, which is the fact that empathy is often therapeutic. If we think about diseases or conditions that do not have a treatment, that aren’t curable, empathy is often the most important part of care. But we can also look at this from the perspective of, but when is it curable? Should we also spend the time and effort, taking into account that we have limited resources, empathizing with the patients or focusing on care? Obviously, the answer should be both. Not always that is possible. And healthcare results, even though they depend on both, above anything else, they depend on good results and good treatments for the patients. Empathy should always be part of it. And as you said, technology is here to help us leverage that part of care, potentially even a replacement in the future. I wouldn’t say that now that is possible. As you mentioned, it’s just words, not actions. And people still know that there’s not a human behind the machine. And that still counts, even if indirectly. But I would say that it’s still relevant. Thank you for the time as well. Maybe we can wrap up very soon.

Jorn Erbguth: We have to wrap up. Thank you. And this was already kind of a final comment from you. Thank you for your excellent moderation, Schrau. Thank you for all that organized this session. Thank you for Amali, who was unfortunately not able to come, and who is kind of the driving force between this dynamic coalition. Thank you for all the participants here on site, online. Thank you for attending, for your interesting questions, for your interests. And we know technology, Internet, AI, data, provide a lot of opportunities to improve healthcare, but also they come with a lot of risks that we have to tackle, and that we have to see how we can manage them in order to keep the risk low and the benefit high when it comes to healthcare and environment and how to improve resilience. So thanks a lot. And we will be at WSIS. So if you’re interested in the topic, please join us again at WSIS in two weeks. Thank you. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Workshop 2. ♪♪♪ Workshop 2. ♪♪♪

Agreement points

Digital divide creates significant barriers to healthcare access

Speakers

– June Parris
– Alessandro Berioni
– Henrietta Ampofo
– Yao Amevi A. Sossou

Arguments

Caribbean countries face economic barriers to keeping up with developed nations’ health technology

Cost of internet access and maintenance creates barriers in developing regions

Only two-thirds of global population have internet access, with 2.6 billion lacking connection

Rural areas particularly affected by connectivity issues in Africa

Accessibility gaps exist due to language barriers and low literacy levels

Summary

Multiple speakers from different regions (Caribbean, Africa, global perspective) agree that lack of internet access, high costs, and infrastructure limitations create major obstacles to implementing digital health solutions, particularly affecting developing countries and rural areas.

Topics

Development | Infrastructure

Need for culturally appropriate and locally integrated digital health solutions

Speakers

– Yao Amevi A. Sossou
– Houda Chihi
– J Amado Espinosa L

Arguments

Need for culturally relevant and locally integrated solutions

Collaboration needed between technical community, academia, and environmental experts

Environmental variables should be integrated into personal health records

Summary

Speakers agree that digital health solutions must be designed with community input, cultural considerations, and local context in mind, requiring multi-stakeholder collaboration to be effective.

Topics

Development | Sociocultural

Technology should complement rather than replace human empathy in healthcare

Speakers

– June Parris
– Yao Amevi A. Sossou
– Houda Chihi

Arguments

Healthcare professionals must create empathy with patients to build trust

Need for healthcare professionals to educate themselves on emerging technologies

AI should complement human care while maintaining empathy

Summary

There is consensus that while technology can enhance healthcare delivery, human empathy and compassionate care remain essential elements that must be preserved and integrated with technological solutions.

Topics

Human rights | Sociocultural

Internet enables environmental and health monitoring systems

Speakers

– Alessandro Berioni
– Henrietta Ampofo
– Houda Chihi
– Joao Rocha Gomes

Arguments

Internet enables early warning systems for climate-related health threats

Malaria modeling using climate data helps predict disease patterns and allocate resources

IoT devices and sensors can monitor environmental factors affecting health

99% of world’s population lives in areas not meeting WHO air quality guidelines

Summary

Speakers agree that internet-connected technologies provide crucial capabilities for monitoring environmental health threats and enabling early warning systems for disease prevention and resource allocation.

Topics

Development | Infrastructure

Similar viewpoints

Both speakers from the Caribbean region highlight the challenges of dependency on external resources and funding, which creates limitations in addressing local health and environmental problems comprehensively.

Speakers

– June Parris
– Jason Millar

Arguments

Caribbean countries face economic barriers to keeping up with developed nations’ health technology

External funding comes with constraints that may limit full problem resolution

Topics

Economic | Development

Both speakers express concern about the potential misuse of AI and algorithmic systems in healthcare, emphasizing risks of discrimination and the need for value-based rather than profit-driven approaches.

Speakers

– Jorn Erbguth
– Alessandro Berioni

Arguments

AI can optimize care but also enable government abuse in healthcare rationing

Algorithms are engagement-driven rather than value-driven, creating challenges

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Human rights

Both speakers emphasize the interconnected nature of health and environmental issues, supporting integrated approaches that consider climate factors in health planning and response.

Speakers

– Amali De Silva-Mitchell
– Henrietta Ampofo

Arguments

WHO mandates health as integral part of climate change issues

Malaria modeling using climate data helps predict disease patterns and allocate resources

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Development

Unexpected consensus

Trust and mistrust in healthcare systems extends to digital solutions

Speakers

– Yao Amevi A. Sossou
– June Parris

Arguments

Patients often prefer self-medication over formal healthcare due to mistrust

Lack of awareness about available digital health solutions

Explanation

It’s notable that speakers from different regions (West Africa and Caribbean) independently identified similar patterns of patient mistrust in formal healthcare systems, which then extends to digital health solutions. This suggests a broader global challenge in healthcare trust that transcends regional boundaries.

Topics

Sociocultural | Human rights

Data quality and validation concerns across different technological applications

Speakers

– Houda Chihi
– Yao Amevi A. Sossou
– Audience

Arguments

Importance of testing and validation before deploying healthcare solutions

Need for unified regulatory mechanisms for data collection validity

Need to validate data quality from IoT devices for environmental health monitoring

Explanation

Unexpected consensus emerged around the critical importance of data validation and quality assurance across different speakers with varying technical backgrounds, suggesting this is a universal concern regardless of specific technological focus.

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Development

Overall assessment

Summary

Strong consensus exists around key challenges including digital divide, need for culturally appropriate solutions, importance of human empathy in healthcare, and potential of internet-enabled monitoring systems. Speakers consistently emphasized equity, accessibility, and human-centered approaches.

Consensus level

High level of consensus on fundamental challenges and principles, with speakers from diverse geographic and professional backgrounds identifying similar barriers and solutions. This suggests these issues are universal concerns in digital health implementation, with implications for policy development requiring coordinated global and local approaches that prioritize equity, cultural sensitivity, and human-centered design.

Different viewpoints

Role of AI in healthcare empathy and patient care

Speakers

– Jorn Erbguth
– June Parris
– Yao Amevi A. Sossou
– Houda Chihi

Arguments

Studies have shown that people tend to see more empathy in AI than in human doctors

It’s up to the individual. As a healthcare professional, you should put your job first, but you should care about the patient and empathize

Healthcare professionals must create empathy with patients to build trust

AI should complement human care while maintaining empathy

Summary

Jorn suggests AI may actually provide better perceived empathy than stressed human doctors, while other speakers emphasize the irreplaceable importance of human empathy and the need for healthcare professionals to prioritize genuine patient connection.

Topics

Human rights | Sociocultural

Primary barriers to digital health adoption

Speakers

– June Parris
– Yao Amevi A. Sossou
– Alessandro Berioni

Arguments

Caribbean countries face economic barriers to keeping up with developed nations’ health technology

Patients often prefer self-medication over formal healthcare due to mistrust

Only two-thirds of global population have internet access, with 2.6 billion lacking connection

Summary

June emphasizes economic and infrastructure barriers, Yao focuses on cultural mistrust and awareness issues, while Alessandro highlights the global digital divide as the primary barrier.

Topics

Development | Infrastructure | Sociocultural

Unexpected differences

Perception of AI empathy versus human empathy in healthcare

Speakers

– Jorn Erbguth
– June Parris
– Yao Amevi A. Sossou

Arguments

Studies have shown that people tend to see more empathy in AI than in human doctors

It’s up to the individual. As a healthcare professional, you should put your job first, but you should care about the patient and empathize

Healthcare professionals must create empathy with patients to build trust

Explanation

Unexpectedly, there was disagreement about whether AI could potentially provide better empathy than human healthcare providers. This is surprising given the general consensus that human connection is irreplaceable in healthcare.

Topics

Human rights | Sociocultural

Overall assessment

Summary

The discussion showed relatively low levels of fundamental disagreement, with most speakers sharing common goals around improving digital health access and equity. The main areas of disagreement centered on prioritization of barriers (economic vs. cultural vs. infrastructure) and the role of AI in patient care.

Disagreement level

Low to moderate disagreement level. Most disagreements were about emphasis and approach rather than fundamental goals. This suggests good potential for collaborative solutions, though different regional perspectives and professional backgrounds led to different prioritization of challenges and solutions.

Partial agreements

Similar viewpoints

Both speakers from the Caribbean region highlight the challenges of dependency on external resources and funding, which creates limitations in addressing local health and environmental problems comprehensively.

Speakers

– June Parris
– Jason Millar

Arguments

Caribbean countries face economic barriers to keeping up with developed nations’ health technology

External funding comes with constraints that may limit full problem resolution

Topics

Economic | Development

Both speakers express concern about the potential misuse of AI and algorithmic systems in healthcare, emphasizing risks of discrimination and the need for value-based rather than profit-driven approaches.

Speakers

– Jorn Erbguth
– Alessandro Berioni

Arguments

AI can optimize care but also enable government abuse in healthcare rationing

Algorithms are engagement-driven rather than value-driven, creating challenges

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Human rights

Both speakers emphasize the interconnected nature of health and environmental issues, supporting integrated approaches that consider climate factors in health planning and response.

Speakers

– Amali De Silva-Mitchell
– Henrietta Ampofo

Arguments

WHO mandates health as integral part of climate change issues

Malaria modeling using climate data helps predict disease patterns and allocate resources

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Development

Key takeaways

Digital health technologies offer significant opportunities for environmental health monitoring and healthcare resilience, but create new vulnerabilities including cyber attacks and potential for government abuse in healthcare rationing

A major digital divide exists globally, with only two-thirds of the population having internet access, creating barriers to equitable healthcare delivery especially in developing regions

Trust and cultural barriers significantly impact adoption of digital health solutions, with patients often preferring traditional remedies due to mistrust of formal healthcare systems

Environmental health monitoring through IoT devices and AI can enable early warning systems and better resource allocation, but data validity and standardization remain critical challenges

Healthcare inequities can be perpetuated or hidden through biased data collection and AI algorithms, as demonstrated by funding disparities between similar diseases

Multi-stakeholder collaboration is essential, requiring integration across health, environment, technology, and policy sectors with youth playing a leading role

Empathy and human connection remain crucial in healthcare delivery, even as AI and technology become more prevalent in medical practice

Cybersecurity must be integrated with sustainability principles to create ‘cyber sustainability’ that protects both data and environmental health

Resolutions and action items

Participants encouraged to join the Dynamic Coalition on Data-Driven Health Technologies and access published documents on the IGF homepage

Upcoming hackathon scheduled for July 2nd on ‘Shaping the Future of Health’ with call for participation

Global call for AI-powered social innovation ideas to be launched in late July to advance public health through technology

Next World Federation of Public Health Associations conference scheduled for September 26th in Cape Town

Follow-up session planned at WSIS in two weeks for continued discussion on the topic

Session organizers committed to sharing presentation materials and resources for static availability

Unresolved issues

How to establish unified regulatory mechanisms and standards for IoT health data collection and validation across different regions

How to balance AI-driven healthcare efficiency with essential human empathy and compassionate patient care

How to address the fundamental affordability barriers that make digital health solutions inaccessible to low-income populations

How to overcome cultural resistance and build trust in digital health technologies in traditional communities

How to ensure data sovereignty and prevent misuse of health data by governments or corporations for discriminatory purposes

How to bridge the language and literacy gaps that prevent effective use of digital health platforms

How to create sustainable funding models for digital health initiatives that don’t come with restrictive constraints

Suggested compromises

Technology should complement rather than replace human healthcare providers, maintaining the essential human element while leveraging AI capabilities

Digital health solutions should be co-created with communities to ensure cultural relevance and local language integration

Flexible payment systems and insurance opportunities should be built into digital health platforms to address affordability concerns

Regional adaptation of global health guidelines and standards to account for local environmental and cultural differences

Gradual education and capacity building approach to help healthcare professionals and communities adapt to new technologies

Balance between data collection for public health benefits and privacy protection through transparent governance frameworks

The WHO has mandated that the health matters are integral part of climate change issues. And we need to look at that from the perspective of the whole community. So, an ecosystem of services. And this will include public safety, emergency, ambulance, hospitals, doctors and citizens and so forth.

Speaker

Amali De Silva-Mitchell

Reason

This comment established the foundational framework for the entire discussion by emphasizing the interconnected nature of health, climate, and technology systems. It moved beyond siloed thinking to advocate for integrated policymaking and governance frameworks.

Impact

This opening comment set the tone for the entire session, establishing the multi-stakeholder, ecosystem approach that subsequent speakers built upon. It provided the conceptual foundation that allowed other speakers to discuss their regional challenges within this broader integrated framework.

AI can either propose optimal care or be used by governments or industry to triage healthcare according to OPAC criteria, quietly determining who receives high-cost therapies and who is excluded… these inequities will not be transparent. They will not be visible because those decisions can be made in the dark and can be hidden behind decisions that seem to be neutral.

Speaker

Jorn Erbguth

Reason

This comment introduced a critical ethical dimension by highlighting how technology can perpetuate or create new forms of discrimination while appearing neutral. The breast cancer vs. prostate cancer funding example provided concrete evidence of existing inequities that could be amplified by AI systems.

Impact

This comment shifted the discussion from purely technical benefits to ethical considerations and power dynamics. It established a critical lens that influenced how subsequent speakers addressed technology implementation, with many emphasizing the need for transparency, accountability, and equity in their presentations.

We depend very heavily on external resources, which means that any funding agency that targets us for aid will usually make us an offer, but at the same time, that also will come with terms and conditions or a set of constraining factors that will limit the actual potential to maybe fully address an issue in a way that is fully beneficial for us.

Speaker

Jason Millar

Reason

This comment revealed the complex power dynamics and dependency relationships that affect technology implementation in developing regions. It highlighted how external funding can inadvertently perpetuate problems by imposing constraints that don’t align with local needs.

Impact

This insight added a crucial geopolitical dimension to the discussion, prompting other speakers to consider not just technical solutions but also the political economy of health technology implementation. It influenced the conversation toward more nuanced discussions about local ownership and culturally appropriate solutions.

Most of the patients I interviewed during the research they didn’t trust on the solutions and even the doctors those that use the platform they confirmed that none of their patients are using the app and basically most of the barriers is deeply rooted on the lack of the human aspect of it. There is a profound lack of awareness and deeply seated mistrust in the health care system extending to it on the digital tools also.

Speaker

Yao Amevi A. Sossou

Reason

This comment provided crucial ground-truth evidence that challenged assumptions about technology adoption. It revealed that technical solutions alone are insufficient without addressing fundamental trust issues and human-centered design principles.

Impact

This comment significantly shifted the discussion from technology-focused solutions to human-centered approaches. It prompted other speakers to emphasize the importance of community engagement, cultural relevance, and trust-building in their subsequent interventions, fundamentally changing the conversation’s focus.

The algorithms are mostly based on engagement drive. So they’re engagement driven algorithms rather than value driven algorithms. And this is a key point we need to address… we claim for a renewed digital social contract to put people at planet first before profit and the engagement algorithms.

Speaker

Alessandro Berioni

Reason

This comment identified a fundamental structural problem with current technology systems – that they optimize for engagement rather than health outcomes or social good. The call for a ‘renewed digital social contract’ provided a concrete framework for addressing these issues.

Impact

This comment introduced a systems-level critique that elevated the discussion beyond individual applications to broader questions about how technology platforms are designed and governed. It influenced the conversation toward policy and governance solutions rather than just technical fixes.

Studies have shown that people tend to see more empathy in AI than in human doctors. Human doctors are often stressed under time pressure, and sometimes they don’t act with the empathy we would like them to act with.

Speaker

Jorn Erbguth

Reason

This counterintuitive observation challenged common assumptions about AI lacking human qualities. It revealed the complex reality that stressed healthcare systems may actually make human providers less empathetic than well-designed AI systems.

Impact

This comment prompted a nuanced discussion about the role of empathy in healthcare and how technology might complement rather than replace human care. It led to a more sophisticated understanding of the human-AI relationship in healthcare delivery.

Overall assessment

These key comments fundamentally shaped the discussion by moving it beyond a simple technology-benefits narrative to a complex, multi-dimensional analysis of power, equity, trust, and human-centered design. The conversation evolved from initial technical optimism through critical examination of systemic inequities, to practical insights about implementation challenges, and finally to sophisticated discussions about governance and human-AI collaboration. The most impactful comments were those that introduced evidence-based challenges to assumptions, revealed hidden power dynamics, or provided concrete examples of implementation failures. This created a more honest and actionable discussion that acknowledged both the potential and the pitfalls of leveraging internet technologies for health and environmental resilience.

How can we validate and evaluate the quality of data produced by IoT devices for environmental health monitoring?

Speaker

Marcelo Fornasin

Explanation

This is crucial for ensuring the reliability of environmental health data used in epidemiological surveillance and public health decision-making

How can we use IoT-generated environmental data to provide epidemiological surveillance in healthcare scenarios?

Speaker

Marcelo Fornasin

Explanation

Understanding the practical application of environmental IoT data in health surveillance systems is essential for effective public health responses

How can healthcare professionals balance AI-driven healthcare benefits with the need for human empathy and compassionate patient care?

Speaker

IGF Ghana representative

Explanation

This addresses the fundamental challenge of maintaining human connection in increasingly automated healthcare systems

How can we develop unified regulatory mechanisms and policies for IoT data collection across different regions?

Speaker

Yao Amevi A. Sossou

Explanation

Standardized approaches are needed to build trust in IoT-generated health and environmental data globally

How can we regionalize environmental health guidelines while maintaining global standards?

Speaker

J Amado Espinosa L

Explanation

Environmental conditions vary by region, requiring localized guidelines that still maintain scientific validity and global coherence

How can we design digital health solutions that are culturally relevant and integrate local languages?

Speaker

Yao Amevi A. Sossou

Explanation

Addressing accessibility barriers and cultural appropriateness is essential for effective adoption of digital health tools in diverse communities

How can we develop sustainable funding models for digital health initiatives in developing countries?

Speaker

June Parris and Jason Millar

Explanation

Current dependency on external funding creates unsustainable cycles, particularly when natural disasters repeatedly set back progress

How can we address the engagement-driven versus value-driven algorithms challenge in health applications?

Speaker

Alessandro Berioni

Explanation

Current algorithms prioritize engagement over health outcomes, which could lead to harmful health recommendations

How can we establish transparent and accountable AI governance frameworks for health applications?

Speaker

Alessandro Berioni and Houda Chihi

Explanation

The black-box nature of neural networks makes it difficult to track how health-related decisions are made, raising concerns about accountability

How can we replicate successful digital health projects and learn from failed ones to improve policy interventions?

Speaker

Joao Rocha Gomes

Explanation

Many digital health projects don’t continue beyond their funding period, suggesting a need to better understand success factors and sustainability models