Virus Intelligence & Strategic Threat Assessment
New global collaboration uses experts and AI to spot the next pandemic
OSLO, SEP 4 —Global health and pandemic experts are banding together to combine their AI programmes and infectious disease knowledge to more accurately rank the viruses that have the potential to cause the next deadly pandemic.
The new partnership will see the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and University of California, Davis (UC Davis) working with the Boston University-based Biothreats Emergence, Analysis and Communication Network (BEACON project) to integrate BEACON’s open-source disease surveillance program with UC Davis’s Virus Intelligence & Strategic Threat Assessment (VISTA) project (formerly “SpillOver 2.0”). VISTA aims to provide risk rankings in near real time through the use of AI-assisted tools along with expert oversight and curation. The combined intelligence will help to identify the viruses at greatest risk of spillover from animals to humans and those most likely to cause disease and death. This could include known culprit viruses like Nipah and Ebola, as well as a new or as-yet-identified pathogen with pandemic potential, known as Disease X. Rankings will be regularly updated through AI pulling through new virus data that then gets fed into the VISTA platform.
Integrating these tools along with expert insights will help inform scientists and research funders like CEPI on what new vaccines should be prioritised or considered for development to prepare for a likely pandemic threat and more rapidly and effectively respond to health emergencies. For example, the viral rankings, which will be made publicly available, will help CEPI’s work building a vaccine library - a store of relevant virus knowledge, data and prototype versions of vaccines that could be rapidly adapted to help respond to a Disease X more quickly and stop a pandemic before it starts. This can help advance the 100 Days Mission, the ambitious goal spearheaded by CEPI and embraced by the G7 and G20 to develop a vaccine in 100 days from identification of a new virus.
CEPI is providing up to $1 million to support the integration of data between BEACON and VISTA.