VetCOMPASS Animal Surveillance is being developed to address the problem of the lack of reliable data regarding breed specific disorders of dogs and cats. The system captures primary practice data on the animals and conditions seen such that levels of specific disorders can be quantified. Such data will hopefully inform policy makers in establishing or improving disease control programs.

Following the 2008 BBC ‘Pedigree Dogs Exposed’ program, 3 major reports were conducted into pedigree dog breeding in the UK. VetCOMPASS Animal Surveillance captures appropriate data as recommended by all three welfare reports:

Bateson – ‘high priority to the creation of a computer-based system for the collection of anonymised diagnoses from veterinary surgeries in order to provide statistically significant prevalence data for each breed’.

Rooney and Sargan – ‘systematic collection of morbidity and mortality data from all registered dogs’.

APGAW – Background:’ there is a lack of information available about the scale of the problem which makes it difficult to obtain a clear picture of what percentage of dogs are affected’.

Three Important Concepts underlie the surveillance system:VeNom Coding VetCOMPASS Animal SurveillancePhD Online surveillance: Acquired and inherited disorders of dogs and cats, sponsored by the RSPCA.

VeNom Coding
Maintained by the VeNom Coding Group Aims:encourage standardised veterinary clinical coding facilitate collaborative researchprovide resource to veterinary communityObjectives:maintain/update clinical standardised terminologyprovide guidance on appropriate clinical codingapprove new terminology

Venom coding provides descriptive terms for diagnosis or presenting signs that standardises description across practices.
It facilitates the linking of risk factors and treatment with diagnosis.
Provide for hierarchical levels of diagnostic description.
It can have ordered multiple diagnoses.
Allows either a diagnosis or presenting sign
Venom codes are embedded into PMS software.
Allows selection of confidence level for diagnosis