Sentinel

Our Problem

Infectious diseases kill millions of people every year, disrupt regional security and economic stability, and can escalate into global crises. The Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the global SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, and the most recent mpox emergency highlight serious vulnerabilities in our health, surveillance, and response systems. Some of the most glaring shortcomings have been in the lack of low-cost, accurate, widely available diagnostic tests, surveillance tools, and digital infrastructure needed to guide public health decisions.

Despite the continued threat of epidemics, we still do not know what pathogens are circulating and lack the tools to monitor how they are spreading. The Sentinel program seeks to overcome this challenge by enabling effective pathogen surveillance, outbreak response, and ultimately prevention of pandemics through the bottom-up empowerment of communities.

Our Solution

Sentinel transforms infectious disease surveillance and response through cutting-edge technology, global collaboration, and local empowerment. Our mission: to preempt outbreaks to save lives and strengthen global health security. The Sabeti Lab at the Broad Institute and Institute of Genomics and Global Health, Redeemer’s University (IGH) (formerly ACEGID) developed the Sentinel system for the early detection and containment of infectious disease outbreaks, relying on three pillars: detect, connect, and empower.

• Detect advances in state-of-the-art pathogen detection technology by creating high-performance tests for deadly infectious diseases supported by an accelerated AI-based design process.
• Connect facilitates the development and implementation of powerful computational tools that can track and monitor outbreaks in real-time, enabling communities to make their own decisions about public health response.
• Empower focuses on training local scientists and public health officials to leverage technologies that will enable them to carry out locally directed outbreak response.

We have already trained more than 3,000 public health workers from 53 of 54 countries in Africa and supported outbreak response for several deadly diseases, but our work is far from over. Over the next five years, we will strengthen our existing framework in Nigeria and Sierra Leone, moving from a regional to a national system. In parallel, we will extend Sentinel’s geographic reach across Africa beginning with the Democratic Republic of Congo and Senegal. By expanding in both depth and breadth, Sentinel will amplify its impact, enhancing resilience, preparedness, and response. The result will be a stronger global network capable of early detection of and response to outbreaks to prevent pandemics.

What's Changed

Since the Finalist announcement, Sentinel has accelerated activities to help bolster its partner countries’ outbreak response. As mpox surged across Sierra Leone, Sentinel-supported teams rapidly deployed tests, pathogen sequencing, and data systems to track the outbreak in real time. Their work helped slow national transmission, demonstrating the effectiveness of locally led outbreak response.

Drawing on lessons from this response and feedback from partners and advisors, Sentinel has:

• Strengthened its monitoring, evaluation, and learning plan to link real-time data with measurable country-led outcomes.
• Further embedded representation from African institutions and organizations in Sentinel’s leadership and governance structures to ensure local representation and alignment with community and national priorities.
• Accelerated collaboration and knowledge-sharing among national and regional partners, driving the adoption and scaling of Sentinel’s technologies. Sierra Leone serves as the latest example of this impact and has enabled country-wide mpox surveillance and response.

These developments set the stage for the next five years as Sentinel continues to scale and empower African institutions to lead a new era of pandemic prevention.