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Friday, September 30, 2005 |
Information
technology & electronic communications |
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Welcome to the latest version of AVINews Monthly. We'd love your feedback on our ongoing efforts to improve the newsletter and its format, so email us your comments: martinmkm@mminformatics.com |
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In
This Issue: |
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Your officers for 2005-2006 are: President - Dr. Michael K. Martin Feedback Please let us know if you have any suggestions or comments about AVI. |
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I would like to thank those folks who have sent ideas or allowed me to draw from their other work for this newsletter. The material has been great. But it all comes from the part of the profession with which I have day-to-day contact. Informatics is like the proverbial elephant being examined by blind men. Each has a unique partial picture of the whole. If I produce all the content for the newsletter myself, you all are going to get mostly standards and mostly economic animal epidemiology and regulatory issues. While this is the part of Informatics that interests me, I'd like to give equal time to educational technology, clinical information systems, etc. If you have descriptions of projects, meetings, proposal text, or other sources that you can share or will take a few minutes to write up items of interest, I'll try to edit them into a format that fits in the newsletter and get them out. Besides newsletter content, I'd also like to ask members to keep AVI in mind when you hear about job opportunities in Informatics or related fields, or candidates looking for employment or training positions. With my email address plastered all over the top of this newsletter, I get a number of inquiries. I won't pester the membership by broadcasting most of these, but if I know about what you all have and are looking for, I can more appropriately direct these requests for information. We are thinking about ways to make a more formal "job board" section of the web site. For now we will continue to include published job listings in the newsletter as we get them, and to direct job seekers as we know of opportunities. Dr. Michael K. Martin |
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Veterinary Informatics at the FDA The Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine has recently begun another "standardization of standards" project with the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM). The following background adapted (with permission) from Dr. Jeff Wilcke's original proposal to FDA gives a good perspective on the information challenges FDA veterinarians face in regulating veterinary drugs, and ways in with Veterinary Informatics can help address these. The Food and Drug Administration Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) has, since the early 1980s developed and adopted a number of medical informatics standards designed to facilitate the exchange of pharmaceutical product information between FDA, drug sponsors and the public. Electronic document structures (or templates) that have been developed include the Structured Product Label (SPL), the Standard Data Tabulation Model (SDTM) and the Standard for Exchange of Non-clinical Data (SEND). A portion of the content needed in each of these templates is best expressed using nationally recognized nomenclature standards. CDER has identified and/or facilitated development of standard nomenclatures designed for incorporation as content when these templates are used to construct documents for electronic transmission. The goals of these efforts include:
Since 1989, Veterinary Medical Informatics and the Drug Information Laboratory at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine has assisted CVM with continuous publication of the FDA Green Book and development of various online resources related to the Green Book and referred to collectively as the Database of Approved Animal Drug Products (http://dil.vetmed.vt.edu) These publications depend, in part, on custom terminologies to provide content for various fields in supporting databases. These terminologies include lists of approved species, ingredients, dose forms, routes of administration. CVM intends to incorporate data exchange standards into the routine flow of information between and among their various constituents (drug companies, veterinarians, consumers). From the perspective of CVM, it is critical to determine whether CDER’s document architectures (e.g., the Structured Product Label or SPL) can, in fact, support the regulation of veterinary pharmaceutical products. As a specific example, it is unlikely that the SPL has anticipated the need to represent the species for which the drug is approved (as the SPL was created for human medicine and the approved species is obvious). Further, it may be necessary to modify the SPL structure so that specific indications, dosages, withdrawal times, etc. can be associated with the species to which they apply. Finally, particular document architectures may be functional, but the standard nomenclatures referenced for specific purposes may not have the appropriate veterinary content (i.e., dose forms, routes of administration, active ingredients that are only used in animals). In order to assess costs associated with adopting data exchange standards for regulating veterinary pharmaceuticals, CVM needs an assessment of the document standards and needs assurance that the nomenclature standards can and will be enhanced to support veterinary content. CVM needs to evaluate these standards and how difficult it may be to integrate the information they convey with existing CVM data structures and nomenclatures. Lastly, CVM needs to begin the process of establishing nomenclature standards (either through adoption of existing standards or additions to existing standards) to support the regulation of veterinary pharmaceuticals. |
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The HL7 Standards Organization held its 19th Annual Plenary Meeting in San Diego September 11 - 16. Dr. Jim Case and Dr. Mike Martin attended. Several topics of significance to Veterinary Medicine were discussed in various committees. Version 2.6 of the standard which has been thought to be about ready to be finalized has to go back for another round of balloting. This is significant because it contains message structures needed for the National Animal Health Laboratory Network (NAHLN) and the related California Pilot Project. The reasons for the delay are unrelated to these new messages and should not impact the early adoption of these messages by these projects. It does delay the day when these messages will be "official" and supported by off-the-shelf HL7 tools. Work on Version 3 is reaching the point where the actual messaging content is becoming potentially useful for Veterinary Medicine. The Public Health and Emergency Response special interest group has a number of case reporting message templates that will require very little modification for use in animal disease notification. This group is also struggling with defining a spatial location data type or structure for transmission of Global Positioning System (GPS) and Geographic Information System (GIS) data as well as other spatial locations such as locations in a room. If this modeling is done correctly, it will be very useful for veterinary case reporting, the National Animal Identification System, and veterinary emergency response systems. This would seem to be a very simple thing to record and transmit, but in reality there are so many opportunities for confusion on coordinate systems, units of measure, projections, and degree of precision that universal modeling of a simple "point on the earth" turns out to be a real challenge. |
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Veterinary Surveillance in the UK Veterinary surveillance is the term used to describe everything we do both to collect information about diseases affecting animals and to make sure that the information gets to those who need it. The 10-year UK Veterinary Surveillance Strategy was launched in October 2003. It has been developed by DEFRA, the Scottish Executive and the Welsh Assembly together with the Department of Agriculture for Northern Ireland working in partnership. This is a good example of how to communicate surveillance data to both the public and healthcare professionals. Thanks to Jim Case for the link. http://www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/diseases/vetsurveillance/index.htm Informatics in Katrina Relief Efforts "Katrina shows need to computerize records" Associated Press (09/13/05) Lauran Neergaard Those of us who have attended the Talbot Symposium year after year have heard Dr. Pittenger stressing the need for good data backup and recovery plans. This article, while oriented toward human medicine, makes a strong case that more than just the survival of your business may be riding on your ability to recover your key patient information in the event of a catastrophe such as Katrina. Medical Site Launched for Katrina Evacuees http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1862175,00.asp More General Coverage of Information Technology Disaster Recovery in Katrina (eWeek) http://www.eweek.com/category2/0,1874,1855141,00.asp Texas Animal Health Commission Begins "Real" ID Trial "Through the rest of the year, livestock identification in Texas is moving from the drawing board to field conditions to test identification devices, equipment durability and reliability. Using USDA cooperative agreement funding, the Texas Animal Health Commission (TAHC) has awarded contracts to four manufacturers of radio frequency ear tags (RFID), five makers of tag reader devices, four computer software providers and a data trustee to maintain the computer records." Animal identification is a good example of a domain in which interoperability of information systems and the data they collect is essential. Adopting existing standards and developing industry specific standards as needed are the first steps. But the "proof is in the pudding" and demonstration projects like the one in Texas force vendors to demonstrate that they can and do support true interoperability. http://www.animalagriculture.org/cattle/CHR2005/Cattle05Summer.pdf (p7) |
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