The COVID-19 pandemic has mainstreamed wastewater-based epidemiology, which analyzes sewage to detect disease outbreaks. Biobot Analytics can identify current community levels of disease and opioid use from just 150 ml of an aggregate sewage sample from a 24-hour period. Because samples include everyone in a sewage system, “there’s an incredible amount of intelligence in wastewater,” says Newsha Ghaeli, Biobot’s president and co-founder. The company is the first to commercialize data from sewage. The CDC in September expanded Biobot’s contract to include monkeypox monitoring.
More Must-Reads From TIME
- AI Is Not an Arms Race
- The 30 Most Anticipated Movies of Summer 2023
- Here's What's in the Debt Ceiling Deal
- India’s Female Wrestlers Are Saying #MeToo
- The End of Succession
- What Erdoğan’s Victory Means for Turkey—and the World
- Why Everyone Is Having Bad Sex (Especially Young People)
- Florence Pugh Might Just Save the Movie Star From Extinction