Omics : a journal of integrative biology
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Health futures are not preordained, nor are they entirely predictable by extrapolation from the past. This is particularly relevant in an era of unprecedented uncertainties converging from the COVID-19 pandemic, multiple zoonotic outbreaks for the past two decades, and the climate crisis currently unfolding. Moreover, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services cautioned in 2019 that around one million animal and plant species are threatened with extinction. ⋯ In doing so, the One Nature governance frame places a firm emphasis on the internal levers of social change and the human values essential to cultivate collective action to curb unchecked extraction of nature that placed human societies in harm's way for future health crises. One Nature is a governance frame and reflexive value system that can be transformative to correct the astigmatism we have long suffered, from the ways in which we have conceived, enacted on, and extracted the natural systems over the centuries. All in all, One Nature supports planetary health and biodiversity through a new vocabulary and post-anthropocentric critical governance lens, and shall help formulate progressive policies to prevent zoonotic outbreaks and future ecological crises.
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The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus continues to spread and evolve across the planet. The crosscutting impacts of the virus, individual country responses to the virus, and the state of preparedness of local public health systems greatly vary across the world. The ostensibly late arrival of the virus in Africa has allowed learning, innovation, and adaptation of methods that have been successful in the early-hit countries. ⋯ As the pandemic evolves, the lessons learned in Asia, in particular, and the emerging new experiences in African countries should inform, ideally in real time, how best to steer the world populations into safety, including those in low-resource health care settings. Finally, we note that the current COVID-19 pandemic is also a test for our collective ability to scale and surge public health in response to future and likely equally challenging zoonosis infections that jump from animals to humans, not to mention climate change-related planetary health calamities in the 21st century. Hence, what we learn effectively from the current COVID-19 pandemic shall have broad, enduring, and intergenerational relevance for the future of planetary heath and society.
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"The pandemic is a portal." In the words of the novelist scholar Arundhati Roy, the COVID-19 pandemic is not merely an epic calamity. It has opened up a new space, a portal, to rethink everything, for example, in how we live, work, produce scientific knowledge, provide health care, and relate to others, be they humans or nonhuman animals in planetary ecosystems. Meanwhile, as the intensity of the pandemic escalates, digital health tools such as the Internet of Things (IoT), biosensors, and artificial intelligence (AI) are being deployed to address the twin goals of social distancing and health care in a "no touch" emergency state. ⋯ In this article, we describe new and critically informed approaches to democratize COVID-19 digital health innovation policy, especially when the facts are uncertain, the stakes are high, and decisions are urgent, as they often are in the course of a pandemic. In addition, we introduce a potential remedy to democratize pandemic innovation policy, the concept of "epistemic competence," so as to check the frames and framings of the pandemic innovation policy juggernaut and the attendant power asymmetries. We suggest that if epistemic competence, and attention to not only scientific knowledge but also its framing are broadly appreciated, they can help reduce the disparity between the enormous technical progress and investments made in digital health versus our currently inadequate understanding of the societal dimensions of emerging technologies such as AI, IoT, and extreme digital connectivity on the planet.
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Historically, the term "artificial intelligence" dates to 1956 when it was first used in a conference at Dartmouth College in the US. Since then, the development of artificial intelligence has in part been shaped by the field of neuroscience. By understanding the human brain, scientists have attempted to build new intelligent machines capable of performing complex tasks akin to humans. ⋯ Examples of AI applications include digital health, diagnosis of diseases in newborns, remote monitoring of health by smart devices, real-time Big Data analytics for prompt diagnosis of heart attacks, and facial analysis software with consequences on civil liberties. While we underscore the need for integration of AI and HI, we note that AI technology does not have to replace medical specialists or scientists and rather, is in need of such expert HI. Altogether, AI and HI offer synergy for responsible innovation and veritable prospects for improving health care from prevention to diagnosis to therapeutics while unintended consequences of automation emergent from AI and algorithms should be borne in mind on scientific cultures, work force, and society at large.