Georgetown Global Health Center launches first open-access wildlife disease database

(Press-News.org) WASHINGTON (November 15, 2023) – Georgetown University Medical Center’s Center for Global Health Science and Security (GHSS) today announces the launch of a first-of-its-kind wildlife disease database -- a system for collecting records of viruses, bacteria, fungi, parasites, etc. -- designed to support an early warning system for potential viral emergence. The Pathogen Harmonized Observatory, or PHAROS, is open to the global community and free to access.

Scientists in GHSS’ Verena program, a collaborative institute comprising a global team of scientists, designed PHAROS to advance research and education around viral emergence – the process of viruses jumping from animals to humans. Verena co-founder and director, Colin Carlson, PhD, says most platforms designed to track diseases in wild animals are very limited and are developed only in response to a major outbreak, such as birds dying off suddenly due to avian flu.

“Our goal is to build a data sharing system that lets us eventually predict pandemics like the weather,” Carlson says. “When we collect data on wildlife viruses, it gets published in journals and then lost forever, because it isn’t ever standardized or compiled. After Covid, there’s no excuse to keep working that way.”

Carlson says scientists from around the world are invited to share and manage their data in PHAROS, and that the platform is designed to allow attribution to its contributors and easy citation for users.

To complement the collection and organization of the data, the team collaborated with GHSS health intelligence researchers to develop a searchable database that can be queried.

“Easy access to these data is the first step to making ‘one health’ a data-driven field – and then making better policies that prevent outbreaks,” says Georgetown professor Ellie Graeden, PhD, an expert in creating and developing quantitative approaches for global-scale decision making.

The initial launch of PHAROS will include a small number of datasets already shared by about  a dozen beta testers, many of whom are on the Verena team, Carlson says.

“Open science is the core of our program,” Carslon explains. “We'll spend the next few months recruiting new users, and will be focusing our efforts on problems like the avian flu panzootic, where we think our database can do the most good.”

Pharos is made possible with support to Verena from the National Science Foundation, and with support to GHSS from Open Philanthropy. 

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About Georgetown University Medical Center
As a top academic health and science center, Georgetown University Medical Center  provides, in a synergistic fashion, excellence in education — training physicians, nurses, health administrators and other health professionals, as well as biomedical scientists — and cutting-edge interdisciplinary research collaboration, enhancing our basic science and translational biomedical research capacity in order to improve human health. Patient care, clinical research and education is conducted with our academic health system partner, MedStar Health. GUMC’s mission is carried out with a strong emphasis on social justice and a dedication to the Catholic, Jesuit principle of cura personalis -- or “care of the whole person.” GUMC comprises the School of Medicine, the School of Nursing, School of Health, Biomedical Graduate Education, and the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. Designated by the Carnegie Foundation as a doctoral university with "very high research activity,” Georgetown is home to a Clinical and Translational Science Award from the National Institutes of Health, and a Comprehensive Cancer Center designation from the National Cancer Institute. Connect with GUMC on Facebook (Facebook.com/GUMCUpdate) and on Twitter (@gumedcenter).

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