On April 24, 2026, the Principled Innovation in Health Care AI Community of Practice adopted work by Beza Merid, Assistant Professor, School for the Future of Innovation in Society in the Rob Walton College of Global Futures. This effect led to the planning and co-facilitation of a workshop for undergraduate and graduate students in the College of Global Futures, along with ASU faculty interested in generative AI tools in digital health care.
The workshop introduced the Digital Plantary Health approach, which examines the environmental impacts of hyperscale data centers required to support generative AI technologies. Participants engaged with a curated case study focused on generative AI tools designed to support mental health. The activity emphasized identifying and evaluating the environmental implications associated with these technologies.
Participants were assigned mock professional and community-based profiles, including roles such as community organizer, deputy assistant director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources, senior environmental scientist at the Salt River Project, and program officer at Health Care Without Harm. Working in small groups, participants analyzed the case study through the lens of these roles, considering how professional responsibilities intersect with environmental challenges related to digital health tools.
To support this work, participants used flashcards outlining ASU's Principled Innovation framework. The framework guided reflection on values-based decision-making and the development of actionable interventions. Each group designed a values-focused intervention informed by both the assigned profile and the framework, culminating in the creation of presentation posters that communicated key insights and proposed solutions.
According to Merid: "This workshop gave our student and faculty participants a fun and iterative way to explore emerging research on the environmental impacts of generative AI in health care, as well as the concrete actions they could take to address their concerns about the interdependencies of digital and planetary health."
Merid offers the following acknowledgments:
"I would like to thank Janna Goebel for her collaboration in planning and facilitating this workshop."