‘Translates into lives saved’: New program at Boston University uses AI to track global diseases

BOSTON — When it comes to infectious diseases, 2026 is shaping up to be a busy and troubling year.

So far, the hantavirus has crippled a cruise ship.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is suffering from a drug-resistant form of Ebola.

Measles outbreaks have occurred in states like Texas, South Carolina, and Utah.

A program at Boston University is changing how public health officials and the general public access timely information to prevent illness and save lives.

The program at the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at BU is called BEACON, which stands for Biothreats Emergence, Analysis, and Communications Networks.

BEACON uses artificial intelligence to scrub vast amounts of data to see if it can find clues about an outbreak before that information reaches standard public health channels.

“Traditional surveillance means the reporting of infectious diseases through the usual public health channels, meaning a diagnostic laboratory or a clinician on the ground identifies an infection and then reports it up to the regional or local public health department,” explained Britta Lassmann, MD, one of the co-founders of BEACON and the current Chief Medical Officer.

“In many cases, we are catching things further upstream because we’re looking at sources that have yet to make it into formal reporting.

So, that might be regional media, and that’s true of social media, radio, and regional newspapers around the world,” added Nahid Bhadelia, MD, who is the founding director of CEID and is currently the director of BEACON.

BEACON is a free and open-access system designed to provide the first signals of an emerging infectious disease.

These so-called signals are then verified by trained professionals.

Only then are they shared with local health officials and the public.

“Our outbreak analysts are based in 13 countries and cover 21 languages, and we’re running 24-7 to provide what we call an alarm bell in case concerns of public health events show up anywhere in the world,” said Dr. Bhadelia

She added that “we live in an age of epidemics. . . as human population grows, as climate-sensitive diseases become more apparent, that means diseases are appearing in places that we don’t expect them. They’re appearing in frequencies that we haven’t seen in the past.”

For example, climate change is causing mosquitoes to travel to new locations where temperatures and humidity support them and allow them to spread disease.

The surge in foreign travel is another factor.

And the popularity of international events like the World Cup.

“We’re doing public reporting on BEACON, looking at risks not just at FIFA sites across Canada, Mexico, and the United States, but we’re also monitoring the rest of the world, given the teams and fan base are coming from around the world,” said Dr. Bhadelia.

She added that improving the response time when something does happen can eliminate a lot of suffering.

“That means that international partners and national governments can work faster together to put the response into place, and that translates into lives saved.”

BEACON recently celebrated its first anniversary.

Over the past year, they reported more than a thousand outbreaks across the globe.

These doctors say they’re not trying to replace public health agencies but believe they can support them by leveraging this technology.

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