Digital environment: An evolutionary component in environmental health

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has hastened the progress of digitalization where the public is forced to embrace paradigm shifts on how we function in a digital society. The way we work, learn, live, and play daily has drastically changed with the revolution of digital systems from their analog predecessor. This transformation warrants the digital environment as a social determinant of health. It comprises the whole continuum from the tangible aspects of the computing devices, their programing and information system, the network technologies connecting them, and the product of interactivity between people to people and people to the digital interface. Despite permeating the everyday life of each level of society, the digital environment has yet to be scrutinized comprehensively in terms of health. A review of the literature produces fragmented results where different specialties within and beyond the medical field lay claim to the various aspects of digitalization. We proposed five domains within the digital environment namely digital transformation, digital health, digital technology, digital identity, and digital media that exerts diversified pressure on the digital environment through human activities. Their subjacent linkage to human health and environmental impact is further discussed by using the DPSEEA framework. Challenges that crossed all domains were discussed including the widening gap of inequalities secondary to the limited availability of, and accessibility to digitalization. Considering the rapid speed at which we propel to a fully immersive virtual world, a timely transformation of environmental health to include the digital environment as part of its main components is inevitable.