By Nahid Bhadelia, MD, MALD
In an interconnected world, the health of humans, animals, and the environment are deeply intertwined. This One Health approach is critical to preventing the next pandemic before it starts. This approach is integral to our work at the Biothreats Emergence Analysis and Communications Network (BEACON), an open access disease surveillance platform based at Boston University’s Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases and HealthMap at Boston Children’s Hospital. Our analysts have reported on over 200 pathogens in nearly 130 different species to date.
Over the past year, BEACON has received nearly $75,000 in grant support from PAX sapiens to improve our wildlife disease surveillance capabilities. With the support of this grant, we have been able to make significant strides in improving our One Health coverage.
“Preventing pandemics requires seeing threats before they reach people. BEACON’s ability to combine local expertise, wildlife disease intelligence, and advanced AI helps close critical surveillance gaps and strengthens our collective ability to detect emerging risks earlier. We are proud to support this work and its contribution to a more proactive global pandemic prevention system.”
– Sabeeha Quereshi, Vice President, Global Pandemic Prevention, PAX sapiens
Expanding our expertise
With this funding, we have grown our global network of subject matter experts (SMEs), hiring two dedicated wildlife SMEs based in Thailand and South Africa. Our international team of SMEs are essential to this reporting, adding clinical expertise and local context to the LLM-drafted reports from the signals received.
In addition to frequently providing high-quality intelligence for the BEACON platform, these experts conducted a comprehensive wildlife disease surveillance gaps and needs assessment across Africa and Asia. This mapping will ensure that future global interventions target the areas where data and resources are needed most. The key findings from this analysis are currently being finalized for publication.
Upgrading the PandemIQ LLM
These additions to our team have helped identify gaps in LLM’s existing knowledge of animal and environmental health. Furthermore, these SMEs selected the additional literature inputs to use in a second round of training for our PandemIQ large language model with additional content on the subject. This launched an updated, One Health-specific version of PandemIQ in March 2026. This has improved the One Health analysis included in the draft reports PandemIQ generates for BEACON SMEs to review.
Behind the scenes, we also upgraded our digital web scraper, adding specialized, multi-language keywords and fresh data sources to catch early wildlife health signals before they escalate.
Global collaboration
Support from PAX sapiens has helped BEACON connect with a wider global audience. Pandemics don’t respect borders, which makes this cross-border teamwork essential. In November, our Co-director and Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Britta Lassmann presented our work at the Global Wildlife Data Sharing Conference in Spain. This helped us build relationships with Canada’s Community for Emerging and Infectious Diseases and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, exploring future opportunities for collaboration and information sharing.
BEACON supports major organizations in the animal health space, including the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Wildlife Conservation Society, PADI-Web, and the Southeast Asia One Health University Network (SEAOHUN) by sharing data sources and platform insights. In FAO’s World Reference Laboratory for Foot-and-Mouth Disease (WRLFMD) 2026 Quarter 1 report on foot-and-mouth disease, BEACON reports were cited several times in evidence of the disease’s spread so far this year.
Additional exchanges with the CEPI-sponsored UC Davis VISTA project has sharpened our reporting, contributing to our reports on critical spillover threats like hantavirus and Pteropine orthoreovirus.
The Impact
With support in part from PAX sapiens grant, our bolstered team, upgraded LLM, and expanding networks has measurably improved the volume, speed, and quality of BEACON’s One Health reporting. Over the course of the project year, BEACON has published 133 reports on wildlife diseases covering 91 species across 47 countries. The velocity of our One Health reports have more than doubled over the course of the project year, jumping from an average of 7 per month in the first 6 months to 15 per month in the second half of the project year.
The most meaningful measure of our success is the trust in BEACON as a reliable, credible source within the One Health, veterinary, and wildlife disease spaces. BEACON was formally included in the FAO’s One Health Information and Communication Technology (ICT) community of practice and the Canadian Animal Health Surveillance System now officially includes BEACON in its daily horizon scanning protocols
With the ongoing support of partners like PAX sapiens, we are proving that combining localized expertise with cutting-edge AI can shine a spotlight on the blind spots of global health.
Stay tuned to our platform for upcoming briefs, and subscribe to our regular BEACON digests for the latest updates on emerging biothreat events.
