A new open-access editorial in npj Digital Medicine is drawing attention to an overlooked sustainability challenge within healthcare: digital waste. In Too many bits: tackling the waste epidemic in digital medicine, an international group of experts — including LDIW President Heidi Solba and UK Leader David Parks — argue that as digital medicine scales, so too does a hidden burden of unused data, dormant apps and redundant files carrying real environmental, financial and operational costs.
We have long understood the dangers of electronic waste — old devices piling up in landfill, leaching toxic materials and consuming resources. But the editorial explains that there is a parallel epidemic quietly growing inside our computers, servers and cloud infrastructure. It is called digital waste — and in medicine, where data volumes are expanding rapidly, it is becoming impossible to ignore.
Digital waste refers to data and software artefacts that accumulate long past their usefulness: duplicate files, unused applications, idle log archives, redundant model versions, forgotten email attachments and cold data sitting in storage consuming energy without ever being accessed again. Unlike physical e-waste, it is invisible. And because it is invisible, it goes largely unchecked.
The scale of the problem is significant. Estimates suggest that more than half of enterprise storage may consist of underutilised or redundant data. In digital medicine, technologies such as digital twins generate continuous streams of sensor data, simulations, imaging files and clinical records. Each new version, each backup and each archived log adds to a cumulative storage load that must be powered, cooled, replicated and maintained — year after year. Storing just 100 terabytes of redundant data can generate an estimated 4,000 kg of CO₂ equivalent annually. Beyond the carbon cost, digital hoarding slows operations, complicates data pipelines, increases security vulnerabilities and drives up financial costs.
What makes the editorial particularly compelling is that it does not simply raise alarm — it proposes solutions. The authors call for a cultural shift in how digital medicine researchers and institutions think about data. They suggest that publications begin reporting not only clinical and algorithmic outcomes, but also data lifecycle metrics — volumes generated, percentages archived or deleted, and energy and carbon estimates. In short, a “data footprint” section could become as standard as a methods section.
One concrete step highlighted is participation in Digital Cleanup Day, held annually on the third Saturday of March — in 2026, on 21 March. Now observed in dozens of countries, Digital Cleanup Day encourages individuals, research labs, hospitals and organisations to deliberately and responsibly declutter their digital infrastructure. The benefits are tangible: lower energy demand, reduced storage costs, faster systems, tighter security and a measurably smaller carbon footprint.
For the Let’s Do It World network, this is familiar territory. The same principles that drive collective environmental action in the physical world apply just as powerfully in the digital one. Bits matter — including in healthcare.
Read the full article on Nature.com to explore why tackling digital waste must become part of the sustainability agenda in digital medicine.
.svg){kind=logo}