By monitoring patterns of clinical signs and symptoms, syndromic surveillance can enable early detection of disease outbreaks before laboratory confirmation is available. It can allow veterinary professionals to respond rapidly to emerging health threats, potentially preventing widespread disease transmission and reducing economic losses in livestock and companion animal populations. By identifying unusual trends in real-time data such as mortality rates, clinical presentations, or behavioral changes, syndromic surveillance strengthens our ability to protect both animal welfare and public health.
Below you will find links to the the syndromes we are working on.
Farm Animal
Pneumonia
Disclaimers
FAVSNET does not give veterinary advice. If you are concerned about the health of animals under your care, you must contact your vet.
FAVSNET is still in a pilot stage. It is not intended to represent the true epidemiological situation of any animal disease or syndrome in Wales and should not be used as a surveillance tool for decision-making at this stage.
Since February 2024, we have collected around 50,000 clinical records and drug label entries. However, more data from additional sources and over a longer period are still needed to improve representativeness and reduce potential hidden biases.
Therefore changes in the numbers of cases with a particular disease or syndrome are probably due to an increase in submissions rather than a genuine rise in disease occurrence.
Additionally, although we have made every effort to ensure these infographics give an accurate representation of the data we receive, there are two sources of potential bias. Firstly, the fact that dashboards are based on clinical records (secondary data) which often lack laboratory confirmation. Secondly, the accuracy of our method to identify cases may also miss them because of changes in spelling or local terminology used by the vet.
In this sense, the dashboards main use is to explore relative distribution such as seasonal patterns or the proportion of different syndromes.
Their use and interpretation are not the responsibility of the FAVSNET team. They are best used by veterinarians to inform local decisions about disease control.
Acknowledgements
FAVSNET is extremely grateful to the participating veterinary practices and laboratories, without whose kind participation and collaboration, these data could not be made available.
If you use these data, we would ask you use the following acknowledgement: “These data are generated by FAVSNET. Any interpretation of these data provided alongside is not from FAVSNET”.
Feedback
We welcome your feedback. Please contact us favsnet@liverpool.ac.uk.