Researchers at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), part of City of Hope, in collaboration with scientists at Jumpcode Genomics, have developed a next generation sequencing (NGS) workflow that could help transform the future of large-scale pandemic responses and focused clinical infectious disease testing. The NGS workflow can enable earlier detection and responses to pathogen outbreaks , variant strain typing, co-infection detection and individual human host response assessment. The workflow is pathogen agnostic and could potentially inform pandemic preparedness plans in the future.