Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Medical Informatics
Date Submitted: Oct 13, 2026
Date Accepted: Oct 13, 2026
Informatics for the Planet: Integrating Species, Ecosystems and Geophysical Data to Manage the Health of Earth Systems
ABSTRACT
Biomedical and health informatics (BMHI) has traditionally focused on human-centric clinical data to support individual patient care and health systems. However, contemporary health challenges driven by climate change, biodiversity loss, and ecological degradation demand an expanded paradigm that addresses interdependencies among human, animal, and environmental health. This editorial introduces a new JMIR Medical Informatics section on “Planetary Health Informatics” (PHI), an essential evolution extending informatics praxis beyond human healthcare toward Earth’s interconnected systems. JMIR Medical Informatics is launching a call for papers for a new section dedicated to advancing PHI theory, methods, and applications for a sustainable future shaped by human impact on Earth. We invite authors to submit work that explores how PHI integrates species, ecosystem, and geophysical data to address critical global challenges, including metagenomic disease surveillance, climate-related hazard forecasting, environmental pollution monitoring, and health infrastructure decarbonization. By synthesizing broader ecological frameworks, we present a roadmap for transforming fragmented data streams into planetary-scale intelligence.
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