Animal Health & Grazing

Goal 1. Develop and implement novel electronic clinical case data collection and reporting tools for use in building effective veterinary epidemiology and surveillance programs at the two veterinary diagnostic laboratories in Kentucky that will be fully integrated with animal health information systems at the Office of the State Veterinarian. Supporting Objectives. 1. Design and implement computer-based forms for electronic data collection that maximize speed, accuracy, completeness, ease-of-use, and conformance with nationally recognized lexicon and messaging standards. 2. Determine and develop the appropriate electronic technologies to perform real-time collection and storage of clinical case information on accessions submitted by practicing veterinarians and farmers. 3. Design and develop electronic reporting and alerting systems that will provide near real-time information on risk factors and grazing animal disease events to laboratory clients, the State Veterinarian, and the USDA. 4. Develop a web-based farmlevel data collection tool that will capture a minimum data base of information on each premIse. Plans to Accomplish Goal 1. The source documents from both diagnostic laboratories (accession forms) will be assessed jointly and redesigned as necessary to meet the criteria for data collection as set out in the supporting objectives. Detailed specifications will be written for a web-based accessioning, laboratory test result capture, and reporting/alerting system to be developed/applied and implemented at both participating laboratories. This will provide immediate entry level surveillance and epidemiological services. The quality of surveillance data will improve as enzootic levels of diseases and syndromes are ascertained. This information base will provide the data streams to drive analytical engines to provide more sophisticated surveillance output in the form of signals, alerts, and web-based visualization products (maps, charts, data summaries).