EMERGENT Project Lebanon

Overview

Lebanon's health system faces a critical gap: without early warning tools, disease outbreaks like cholera, hepatitis, and meningitis can spiral before authorities are even aware. The AI-Powered Pandemic Preparedness project, led by a Lebanese research team, is changing that using artificial intelligence to detect the earliest signs of dangerous infectious diseases before they become crises.

Connected directly to national laboratory data, the system automatically analyzes and interprets outbreak signals across a range of serious contagious diseases, including acute flaccid paralysis, food poisoning, and meningitis enabling faster, more coordinated responses at a national scale. The team has also published a landmark systematic scoping review identifying Lebanon's highest-risk pandemic pathogens, giving the government a clear evidence base for preparedness planning and resource prioritization.

The results are already rippling outward: findings on AI's role in predicting infectious disease outbreaks are being widely shared across the region, driving collaboration and building capacity in a field where Lebanon is emerging as a leader. As machine learning models are validated through retrospective testing, the project is laying the groundwork for a scalable, AI-driven early warning system one that could fundamentally reshape how Lebanon, and the wider region, prepares for the next pandemic.