Enhancing equine surveillance in New Zealand: development of a veterinary practice-based health information and data system

The NZERF’s generous contribution to the New Zealand Equine Health Association has enabled them to progress the equine health and disease surveillance project.

Now named Vet Intel (Equine), the project’s end goal is to collate and use equine diagnostic data collected from equine veterinary practices across New Zealand to provide a real time picture of the diseases and syndromes occurring in the New Zealand horse population.

The NZERF funds were used to facilitate the standardisation of diagnostic terms and coding systems across veterinary practices, refine the automated data transfer process, and for preliminary data analyses which then enabled the development of automated software tools. These software tools turn the raw data into graphs and charts to make the information easy to interpret by users (vets, researchers, etc) while maintaining confidentiality.

Up-to-date information on the health of our horse population is extremely sparse and this system is now moving us towards a future that will enable proactive management of health as well as early detection and management of exotic diseases.

The system offers us the potential to measure the success of vaccination programmes, strategies to counter antimicrobial resistance or any other equine health management initiative. Now that the software system is in place we are working towards the ability to retrieve data from three different companies’ Practice Management Systems – the most challenging part of the project to date.

Patricia Pearce
New Zealand Equine Health Association