The results of veterinary diagnostic laboratory (VDL) testing are critical in managing the health of both individuals and groups of animals. The clearest use of test result data is for clinicians and herd health managers to establish diagnoses, prognoses, and treatment plans for their patients. There are, however, myriad other uses for laboratory data that to date have proven difficult to leverage. One example, veterinary syndromic surveillance, relies on 2 major sources of data, clinical data from practitioners and laboratory data. Laboratory test requests, rather than test results, are used for syndromic surveillance given their timeliness and ease of grouping into syndromic classes. Veterinary syndromic surveillance systems that use laboratory data for companion animals, cattle, pigs, horses, and for other applications have been developed and tested. Test result data have also been compiled to create timely disease monitoring or surveillance information for practitioners and producers. The University of Kentucky Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory developed the Animal Disease and Diagnosis Mapping Initiative that uses test results and syndromic events to monitor the health of the State’s animal population.¹ The Academy of Veterinary Consultants, an association of veterinarians involved in beef cattle medicine, herd health programs, and consultation, compile laboratory results across multiple laboratories in the United States to generate a quarterly report on cattle diagnostic submissions, testing results, and diagnoses for the exclusive use by the members of the Academy. The report introduction outlines the limitations of the data in the report, the first being, “due to the nature of VDL submissions, the information generated from VDL results is biased and composed of primarily convenience sampled animals.”

中文翻译：

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利用和提高兽医诊断实验室数据的价值

兽医诊断实验室 (VDL) 测试的结果对于管理个体和动物群体的健康至关重要。测试结果数据的最明确用途是临床医生和畜群健康管理人员为他们的患者建立诊断、预后和治疗计划。然而，迄今为止已证明难以利用的实验室数据还有无数其他用途。一个例子，兽医综合症监测，依赖于两个主要的数据来源，来自从业者的临床数据和实验室数据。实验室测试请求，而不是测试结果，被用于症状监测，因为它们的及时性和易于分组到症状类别。使用实验室数据的兽医综合症监测系统，用于伴侣动物、牛、猪、马、并针对其他应用进行了开发和测试。还编译了测试结果数据，以便为从业者和生产者创建及时的疾病监测或监测信息。肯塔基大学兽医诊断实验室制定了动物疾病和诊断绘图计划，该计划使用测试结果和综合征事件来监测该州动物种群的健康状况。¹ The Academy of Veterinary Consultants 是一个参与肉牛医学、畜群健康计划和咨询的兽医协会，它汇总美国多个实验室的实验室结果，以生成关于牛诊断提交、测试结果和诊断的季度报告学院成员独家使用。报告介绍概述了报告中数据的局限性，首先是，“由于 VDL 提交的性质，VDL 结果产生的信息是有偏见的，并且主要由方便抽样的动物组成。”