AI-powered beacon platform improves global disease surveillance

AI-powered beacon platform improves global disease surveillance

The Biotreats Emergence, Analysis and Communications Network (Beacon) leverages advanced artificial intelligence (AI), large language models (LLMs), and a network of globally based experts to rapidly collect, analyze, and disseminate information about emerging infectious diseases affecting people, animals, and the environment. The director of Beacon, Dr. Nahid Bhadelia, notes: "Beacon comes at a time when we need more global collaboration and coordination as new biological threats emerge. The platform not only reports new threats, but also provides background and reasons as to why a threat is important and where it should rank on our ranking of concerns."

Beacon is based at Boston University's Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases and is developed in collaboration with the Hariri Institute for Computing and Data Sciences at Boston University and Healthmap at Boston Children's Hospital.

The launch of Beacon represents an exciting development in the field of infectious disease surveillance. By integrating HealthMap's decades of experience in real-time epidemic surveillance into Beacon's novel AI-driven architecture, we are creating a uniquely powerful open source tool for rapidly identifying and contextualizing emerging threats. “

Dr. John Brownstein, chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital and a co-director of Beacon

When launched, Beacon will be the only open source global surveillance platform of its kind, connecting public health authorities, practitioners, researchers and the general public, quickly and transparently sharing data and context about emerging threats. Like the early fire and hurricane warning systems, Beacon's job is to analyze and transmit the emergence of new threats. By providing near real-time reporting on sentinel cases, clusters and outbreaks, Beacon will enable early public health response. It empowers clinicians to track recent travel and illnesses in their patients and inform communities about potential new threats.

“Beacon is the first Biotrise reporting system to harness the power of generative AI to process and analyze outbreak reports,” says Hariri Institute Director and a co-director of Beacon, Dr. Yannis Paschalidis. He adds: “Beacon employs our own Pandemiq llama LLM, which is specifically customized and trained to optimize performance for outbreak analysis and report generation.”

Beacon has already received $6 million in funding support, including contributions from the National Science Foundation, the Gates Foundation, additional private donors and Boston University.

Beyond financial support, Beacon has also established partnerships with senior public health stakeholders, including the World Health Organization's Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources Initiative, the World Organization for Animal Health, Coalition for Innovations for Epidemic Preparedness, state health departments, and the CDC Center for Prognosis and Outbreak Analysis.

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