dbt for public health: sightline wastewater monitoring at scale

Verily's Sightline program monitors 30+ pathogens in wastewater across hundreds of US sites, giving public health officials early detection before clinical testing shows upticks. We deliver concentration trends for COVID-19, RSV, influenza, norovirus, and mpox within 48 hours—powered by analytics built on Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR).

FHIR resources arrive as deeply nested JSON, and we built Sightline's analytics layer using composable, reusable dbt macros that flatten FHIR data into dimensional models optimized for real-time public health dashboards. These same macros now power dozens of dashboards across a wide variety of use cases in the health ecosystem—from clinical research to care delivery.

You'll learn how we designed macros that work across varied FHIR schemas, when to share transformation logic, and how to build dimensional models that scale from one data mart to many. Outcome: dashboards helping communities prepare for and prevent disease spread.