Disease Forecasting

The swine industry collects a vast and ever-expanding amount of data. Considering the existing knowledge on determinants of disease and its effect of pathogen ecology, it is possible to use historical data to forecast upcoming health-related event. For instance, existing data can be used to forecast the probability of pathogen introduction into herds and/or regions. Similarly, it is possible to forecast the effects of the 3 way interaction between host-environment-pathogen on the health and productivity of swine populations.

We believe that such forecasting tools are enabling Precision Swine Health & Productivity Management, allowing decision makers to transform their vast amount of data into information to guide their decision trees, positively influencing swine health, welfare & productivity.

Forecasting swine health & productivity:
Precision Swine Health & Production: making decisions for specific sites at specific points in time
> Edison Magalhães (2019 McKean conference)
> Edison Magalhães (NA PRRS 2019 presentation)
> Edison Magalhães (Leman 2019 presentation)
Forecasting disease activity (regional level):
Using historical veterinary diagnostic laboratory (VDL) data to identify patterns of pathogen detection, forecast upcoming results, and identify ‘signals’ based on differences between expected and observed lab results.
> Giovani Trevisan (ISU Swine Debate Group meeting, October 2019)
Forecasting vulnerability for disease outbreaks, breeding herd level:
Measuring biosecurity vulnerability: biosecurity scoring systems to measure the probability of upcoming PRRSV outbreaks
> Silva et al., 2019