The Ontario Animal Health Network: enhancing disease surveillance and information sharing through integrative data sharing and management

Development of interactive dashboards for monitoring endemic animal pathogens in Ontario, Canada: Ontario interactive animal pathogen dashboards

The advancement of web-based technologies makes it possible to build user interfaces or web pages that present and summarize complex data in easy-to-read graphical formats that emphasize key information. Taking advantage of this technologic progress, we addressed the need for real-time visualizations of trends for major pathogens in the largest livestock industries in Ontario: poultry, swine, and cattle. These visualizations were built using test data from the laboratory information management system of the Animal Health Laboratory at the University of Guelph, a large veterinary diagnostic laboratory in Ontario. The data were processed using R software and used to construct interactive and dynamic visualizations using Tableau Desktop v.2021.4 (Tableau Software). We designed 12 dashboards: in chickens-influenza A virus, fowl adenovirus, infectious bronchitis virus, and infectious laryngotracheitis virus; in turkeys-influenza A virus; in swine, influenza A virus, rotavirus, and porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus; in cattle-bovine viral diarrhea virus, Mycoplasma bovis, Salmonella Dublin in individual samples, and Salmonella Dublin in bulk tank milk samples. Data for each pathogen are presented in 2 dashboards. One shows the data of the last 10 y (general view) and the other the data of the last 3 y, but in more detail (comprehensive view). Information on gaining access to all dashboards is available at https://iapd.lsd.uoguelph.ca/. The visualizations provide near-real-time access to aggregated assay results for selected pathogens for veterinarians, animal health regulatory agencies, researchers, and other users who are interested in livestock pathogen surveillance.