AI-Assisted Pathogen Cluster Analysis for Disease Surveillance

PHYLOViZ is a bioinformatics tool used by the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to visualize the evolutionary relationships between bacterial or pathogen strains using a minimum spanning tree algorithm. It helps public health scientists identify clusters of related isolates that may indicate an outbreak. The system processes laboratory sequencing data — not personal identifying information — and produces graphical relatedness networks used for surveillance reporting.