Speaker
Description
Infectious disease forecasting in novel outbreaks or low-resource settings is hampered by the need for large disease and covariate datasets, bespoke training, and expert tuning, all of which can hinder rapid generation of forecasts for new settings. To address these challenges, we developed Mantis, a foundation model trained entirely on mechanistic simulations, which enables out-of-the-box forecasting across diseases, regions, and outcomes, even in settings with limited historical data. We evaluated Mantis against 68 forecasting models across 14 diseases with diverse modes of transmission, assessing both point forecast accuracy (mean absolute error) and probabilistic performance (weighted interval score, coverage). Despite using no real-world data during training, Mantis achieved lower mean absolute error than all models in the CDC's COVID-19 Forecast Hub when tested on early pandemic forecasts. Across all other diseases tested, Mantis consistently ranked in the top two models across evaluation metrics. Mantis further generalized to diseases with transmission mechanisms not represented in its training data, demonstrating that it can capture fundamental contagion dynamics rather than memorizing disease-specific patterns. These capabilities illustrate that purely simulation-based foundation models such as Mantis can provide a practical foundation for disease forecasting: general-purpose, accurate, and deployable where traditional models struggle.
