Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 1/5

Wastewater is an overlooked, non-invasive source of population health data

Mariana Matus · HIBT Lab! Biobot Analytics: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli · Feb 9, 2023 · at 4:17

Mariana Matus, co-founder of Biobot Analytics, explains the foundational advantage of wastewater epidemiology over individual diagnostic sampling.

0:00 / 0:35exact quote · 35.5s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Wastewater had been massively overlooked as a critical source of data to understand population health, and I think that the beauty of tapping into pee, poo, or wastewater as a data source is that we naturally are excreting it out. So rather than needing to be invasive and need to be poked or swapped in order to get data, we naturally are producing this data every day and actually disposing it and collecting it into our wastewater infrastructure.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Mariana Matus

Prediction Not checkable as stated
Wastewater platforms will eventually track chronic diseases like cancer and diabetes
“I absolutely see the future where we will have enough data to start to learn kind of predictive components of data To then be able to look at those other more chronic diseases and ultimately, of course, be able to flag a new threat before anybody else knows ab…”
Mariana Matus Feb 9, 2023 ▶ 15:34 HIBT Lab! Biobot Analytics: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli
Assertion Supported
Wastewater testing can detect influenza, RSV, gonorrhea, and hepatitis C
“It is possible to look at influenza, RSV, other respiratory viruses, to look at gastrointestinal diseases like norovirus, to look at sexually transmitted diseases like gonorrhea or chlamydia, to look at blood-borne pathogens like hepatitis C.”
Mariana Matus Feb 9, 2023 ▶ 14:46 HIBT Lab! Biobot Analytics: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli
Insight
Investors struggle with startups targeting the government as their core early customer
“It's been a challenge for many investors to wrap their heads around this new type of business model and a startup that is proposing to work with government as the target customer, as the core customer from day one.”
Mariana Matus Feb 9, 2023 ▶ 18:17 HIBT Lab! Biobot Analytics: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli
Assertion Supported
Cary, North Carolina saw a 40% overdose drop using Biobot wastewater data
“The message was embraced by the community, and they saw a 40% decrease in overdoses, which was also the first ever decrease they'd seen in overdoses in their town in almost a decade.”
Mariana Matus Feb 9, 2023 ▶ 24:40 HIBT Lab! Biobot Analytics: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Wastewater drug tracking will transform global substance abuse crisis response
“We also absolutely believe that the drug use data that we can collect from wastewater, so use of substances like opioids, meth, cocaine, and other emerging substances, will just transform our ability to understand and to tackle that other crisis that is happen…”
Mariana Matus Feb 9, 2023 ▶ 28:24 HIBT Lab! Biobot Analytics: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Less than one percent of genetic data in wastewater originates from humans
“We found that much less than one percent of the genetic data we got back was coming from people.”
Mariana Matus Feb 9, 2023 ▶ 31:59 HIBT Lab! Biobot Analytics: Mariana Matus and Newsha Ghaeli
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 800 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.