Veterinary syndromic surveillance in practice: costs and benefits for governmental organizations

BACKGROUND: We describe a veterinary syndromic surveillance system developed in Sweden based on laboratory test requests. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The system is a desktop application built using free software. RESULTS: Development took 1 year. During the first year of operation, utility was demonstrated by the detection of statistically significant increases in the number of laboratory submissions. The number of false alarms was considered satisfactory in order to achieve the desired sensitivity. DISCUSSION: Besides the demonstrated benefit for disease surveillance, the system contributed to improving data quality and communication between the diagnostic departments and the epidemiology department.