The Novo Nordisk Foundation has committed up to 200 million Danish kroner ($31 million) to support a new, artificial-intelligence-enabled system to monitor infectious disease outbreaks and bolster global pandemic preparedness.
Dubbed the Global Pathogen Analysis Platform (GPAP), the initiative will be based out of the Technical University of Denmark, with satellite sites at the University of Copenhagen, the Statens Serum Institut and Imperial College London.
The free platform will offer a “state-of-the art, analytical toolkit for analysing genomic pathogen data” for scientists, public health authorities and others, the Novo Nordisk Foundation said in an Oct. 13 release.
“With the establishment of GPAP, we will get a secure, AI-powered data infrastructure that can deliver valuable support to researchers and public health authorities globally while being independent of commercial interests,” Lene Oddershede, the Novo Nordisk Foundation’s chief scientific officer, said in the release. “The infrastructure will be free to use and specifically designed to meet the needs of low- and middle-income countries that currently lack access to such technology.”
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The Novo Foundation’s initial financial support for GPAP extends over six years, after which a long-term funding plan will be developed.
“It is crucial that we detect and respond to new health threats as quickly and as locally as possible,” Henrik Wegener, Ph.D., who will head the GPAP, said in the release. “If we can stop an outbreak of an infectious disease before it goes from local to global level, we can prevent future pandemics.”
The nonprofit Novo Nordisk Foundation, which awards grants in the health, sustainability and life sciences ecosystems, stepped up earlier this year to support the World Health Organization (WHO) in the wake of the U.S. withdrawing funding from the United Nations-backed agency. In May, the organization pledged 380 million Danish kroner ($58 million) to be distributed to the WHO this year through 2028.
