SAVSNET: Developing the research potential of veterinary health informatics in the UK through growth, partnership and collaboration.

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Illness of pets (cats, dogs, rabbits etc.) impacts not just on their welfare, but also on that of humans. Despite this, we often have poor understanding of what makes individual animals unwell, and what makes their owners take them to the vet. One area of research revolutionising such understanding of human illness is "health informatics", where large volumes of electronic patient health records (EHRs) are anonymised and compiled into a "Big data" resource, allowing new research insights and discoveries. Whilst medical informatics has been seen a rapid recent expansion, catalysed by the establishment of a national research network (the Farr Institute), veterinary health informatics remains a relatively unexplored opportunity. SAVSNET (Small Animal Veterinary Surveillance NETwork; www.savsnet.co.uk) is pioneering such data resources for pets. In just over 2 years, we have collected health records in real-time from diagnostic laboratories (~80,000 tests/day) and 166 veterinary practices (~3000 consultation records/day) from across the UK. This has allowed us to create two large data resources (>900,000 EHRs, >40million test results) that are updated and growing daily. Our novel software allows the attending veterinary surgeon or nurse with a single key stroke to indicate the main reason the animal was seen, and in return, allows the same vets and nurses to analyse their own data. These data are being used to provide freely-accessible disease information and surveillance updates, along with a growing portfolio of new and novel research collaborations including studies on population demographics, preventative health care, antibacterial use, rabbit disease, as well as kidney, respiratory and gastrointestinal diseases. SAVSNET is now recognised as an international leader in this new area of veterinary health informatics research.The aim of this proposal is to increase the amount of research carried out using SAVSNET data. We will capitalise and build on our strong foundation, maximising the opportunities for these data to inform new research with a wide group of collaborators, all with the intention of improving both animal and human health and wellbeing.The objectives of this application are to:1: Enable more laboratories and veterinary practices to contribute data. The resultant increase in data volumes will help ensure our data is representative of the whole of the UK, and allow the study of even rare diseases. 2: Strengthen our databases to ensure they can cope with the large data volumes and growing number of users.3: Build a web based "one-stop-shop" for researchers (e-Research Portal), to make the data more accessible, easier to understand and increase its use in research and publication. 4: Develop a world leading veterinary health informatics research base through strengthening collaboration with medical health informatics colleagues at the Farr Institute, University of Manchester.5: Develop and showcase new data analyses tools, cascading these to other users via the SAVSNET e-Research Portal. Text mining, where computers are taught how to extract useful meaning from unstructured writing, will be used to unlock the research potential of the clinical narrative entered by vets and nurses. These tools will be developed in the context of two strategically important research projects; 1) factors associated with use of antibacterials and 2) seasonal tick activity in the context of climate. 6: Diversify data use, developing a business model for future SAVSNET sustainability. With BBSRC support, we will grow our user base and funding from academia and industry, to allow SAVSNET to become self-funding.At the end of the project, we will have established a sustainable international centre of excellence for veterinary health informatics research, developing innovative software solutions, to answer some of the critical real-world animal and human health problems of the 21st century.