Ginkgo Bioworks aims to use AI to predict measles outbreaks, thanks to the Gates Foundation

With a new grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Ginkgo Bioworks says it will build an AI-powered forecasting model to predict outbreaks of measles.

The grant is meant to fund research that could help mitigate public health crises. Ginkgo’s research will be in partnership with researchers Alessandro Vespignani and Sam Scarpino from Northeastern University, according to a news release from Ginkgo. 

The forecasting model will be open-access and will use data from public health reports, travel patterns, economic activity and other sources. Artificial intelligence will be used to produce actionable analysis that can inform decision-making around interventions.

The amount of the grant was not disclosed.

Measles reporting is often not very robust, according to Gingko, so the development of the model aims to make what data is available more useful. Getting ahead of outbreaks, especially in low- and middle-income countries, can reduce the spread of illness and subsequent mortality. 

“If we wait until large pockets of measles show up in hospital systems to launch public health responses, we are missing a critical window to act and slow the spread of this debilitating and highly contagious disease,” said general manager for biosecurity at Ginkgo, Matt McKnight, in a statement.

"Modern data and AI tools can shift the biosecurity and public health paradigm from reactive to proactive by helping global health leaders make more timely, effective decisions to prevent outbreaks from happening in the first place," McKnight added.

In 2000, years after the adoption of a vaccine against the highly contagious disease, measles was declared eliminated from the United States. But this year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported dozens of measles cases in outbreaks across 17 states — a number equal to or greater than the total measles infections reported in all of 2023, according to Scientific American.

Ginkgo said that the open-access model will be available to the global health community. A timeframe for the project was not specified.