Infectious Disease Surveillance Platform BEACON Launches as a New Open-Source Global Resource

The Biothreats 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 on emerging infectious diseases affecting humans, animals, and the environment. BEACON Director, Dr. Nahid Bhadelia remarks, "BEACON comes at a time when we need more global collaboration and coordination when new biological threats appear. The platform not only reports new threats but also provides background and reasons for why a threat matters and where it should fall on our ranking of concern."

BEACON is housed at Boston University’s Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases and operated in partnership 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 evolution in the field of infectious disease surveillance," says Dr. John Brownstein, Chief Innovation Officer at Boston Children’s Hospital and a BEACON Co-Director. "By integrating HealthMap’s decades-long experience in real-time epidemic monitoring with BEACON’s novel AI-driven architecture, we’re creating a uniquely powerful, open-source tool for rapid detection and contextualization of emerging threats."

At its launch, BEACON will be the only open-source global surveillance platform of its kind, linking public health authorities, practitioners, researchers, and the general public, rapidly and transparently sharing data and context about new threats. Like early warning systems for fires and hurricanes, BEACON’s job is to analyze and broadcast the rise of new threats. By providing near real time reports of sentinel cases, clusters and outbreaks, BEACON will enable early public health response, empower clinicians tracking recent travel and illnesses in their patients and inform communities of potential new threats.

"BEACON is the first biothreats reporting system to leverage the power of generative AI to process and analyze outbreak reports," says Hariri Institute Director and a BEACON Co-Director Dr. Yannis Paschalidis. He adds, "BEACON employs our own PandemIQ Llama LLM, specifically adapted and trained to optimize performance for outbreak analysis and report generation."

BEACON has already received a total of $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 high level stakeholders in the public health space including the World Health Organization’s Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources initiative, the World Organisation for Animal Health, Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, state public health departments, and the CDC Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics.

More information about BEACON can be found here.

Most Popular Now

Unlocking the 10 Year Health Plan

The government's plan for the NHS is a huge document. Jane Stephenson, chief executive of SPARK TSL, argues the key to unlocking its digital ambitions is to consider what it...

Alcidion Grows Top Talent in the UK, wit…

Alcidion has today announced the addition of three new appointments to their UK-based team, with one internal promotion and two external recruits. Dr Paul Deffley has been announced as the...

AI can Find Cancer Pathologists Miss

Men assessed as healthy after a pathologist analyses their tissue sample may still have an early form of prostate cancer. Using AI, researchers at Uppsala University have been able to...

AI, Full Automation could Expand Artific…

Automated insulin delivery (AID) systems such as the UVA Health-developed artificial pancreas could help more type 1 diabetes patients if the devices become fully automated, according to a new review...

How AI could Speed the Development of RN…

Using artificial intelligence (AI), MIT researchers have come up with a new way to design nanoparticles that can more efficiently deliver RNA vaccines and other types of RNA therapies. After training...

MIT Researchers Use Generative AI to Des…

With help from artificial intelligence, MIT researchers have designed novel antibiotics that can combat two hard-to-treat infections: drug-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae and multi-drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Using generative AI algorithms, the research...

AI Hybrid Strategy Improves Mammogram In…

A hybrid reading strategy for screening mammography, developed by Dutch researchers and deployed retrospectively to more than 40,000 exams, reduced radiologist workload by 38% without changing recall or cancer detection...

Penn Developed AI Tools and Datasets Hel…

Doctors treating kidney disease have long depended on trial-and-error to find the best therapies for individual patients. Now, new artificial intelligence (AI) tools developed by researchers in the Perelman School...

New Training Year Starts at Siemens Heal…

In September, 197 school graduates will start their vocational training or dual studies in Germany at Siemens Healthineers. 117 apprentices and 80 dual students will begin their careers at Siemens...

Are You Eligible for a Clinical Trial? C…

A new study in the academic journal Machine Learning: Health discovers that ChatGPT can accelerate patient screening for clinical trials, showing promise in reducing delays and improving trial success rates. Researchers...

New AI Tool Addresses Accuracy and Fairn…

A team of researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has developed a new method to identify and reduce biases in datasets used to train machine-learning algorithms...

Global Study Reveals How Patients View M…

How physicians feel about artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine has been studied many times. But what do patients think? A team led by researchers at the Technical University of Munich...