5. CONCLUSION
As diseases evolve and change through time, and countries are becoming
more efficient at recording disease events, updating systems is the way
to move forward. Surveys such as this one give insights of what can be
done to improve current animal information systems. This survey provided
a general overview of the needs, preferences and constraints that
professionals have with current animal information systems or risk
analysis tools. From these results, it is clear that for professionals
who work in animal and public health, epidemiology and surveillance,
animal health systems and risk analysis tools are used in their daily
work. Not only to obtain data, but also to produce reports, and gather
disease information. The overall majority is homogenous in what
preferences they have regarding the type of information, and from many
different parts of the world. It is essential for animal information
systems not only to contain data on incidence and cases but also be more
specific regarding risk pathways and spread assessment. The data or
information should be i) easily accessible keeping in consideration
privacy issues, and accessible from different regions of the world as
well as ii) user friendly. Requirements for ease and flexibility of data
extraction were highly rated. Standard data formats were preferred as
this expedited the work required for risk estimation analyses or simple
descriptive report production. This could ease and strengthen analysis
done by different professionals, which would improve surveillance and as
such impede future animal disease incursions.