Reducing the Environmental Impact of Digital Health: Development of an Ecoscore for Health Apps

Abstract

The digital revolution is perceived as minimizing the environmental impact of human activities. However, digital actually uses real physical equipment, that consumes natural resources and emits greenhouse gases. The French Ministry of health has very soon engaged in the development of an ethical digital health with a strong concern for eco-responsibility. We have developed an Ecoscore service to allow providers of web and mobile health apps to calculate the environmental impact of their apps. The ecoscore is computed on a script describing the canonical use of the app. It is based on parameters actually measured, data flow (data downloaded from datacenters), performance (time taken to display the result of an action), and energy consumption (battery discharge rate). The French Ministry of Health has made the ecoscore mandatory to software providers candidating to the service catalog of Mon espace santé, a digital health space offered to all French citizens.