3.3 Utility of animal health information systems
When asked “how frequently they use the animal health information systems”, 0.93% of the respondents answered never, 8.88% rarely, 26.64% sometimes, 35.05% often and 28.50% always. There was no association between the frequency of animal health information system use and the type of information that they find useful in them (all types of information were not significant in the Poisson model where frequency of use was the outcome; p-value > 0.05).
The univariate Poisson regression model, using degree of usefulness as the outcome variable and type of information (listed in questionnaireAppendix S1 ) as the explanatory variable (“treatment” being the reference category) showed that there was a difference in the usefulness of type of information available in the animal health information systems (Figure 3). Overall the 5 most important were “prevention measures” (extremely useful category with 42.52%), “efficiency of currently available control measures” (extremely useful category, 33.8%), “cases/incidence information” (extremely useful category, 33.3%), “zoonotic potential” (extremely useful category 39.4%) and “evolution/spread of the disease during time (days, weeks, months)” (extremely useful category, 33.3%). The 5 least useful ones were “regulations which are currently in place regarding a specific disease”, “methodologies for risk analysis which have been described so far”, “produce risk estimation”, “pathogenesis of the disease” and “treatment”, with 22.5%, 21.1%, 21.1%, 17.4% and 15% respectively in the extremely useful category. The information “methodologies for risk analysis which have been described so far”, “produce risk estimation” and “pathogenesis of the disease” had the same degree of usefulness as “treatment” given that they were not statistically significant (p-value <0.05) in the Poisson model.