Page 19 - Eclipse - Autumn/Winter 2022

CLINICAL NEWS

the overall evidence base on breed- In recent years, VetCompass has routinely cited as a major limitation to
related health in companion animals, made extensive use of machine-learning progress. VetCompass has aimed to
especially in relation to the harms to make sense of the enormous amounts fill these data gaps by sharing these
from extreme conformations such as of data being recorded in veterinary clinical data in a de-identified format
brachycephaly. VetCompass evidence clinics. VetCompass shares clinical data from veterinary practices and merging
is promoting improved animal welfare on over 20 million UK companion animals, them into a single dataset to enable
through, for example, policy to shift covering over 200 million clinical notes research that benefits pets, owners and
ownership towards higher welfare and half a billion individual sales and the veterinary community. To facilitate this
breeds (‘Stop and think before buying treatments – veterinary research is now data for epidemiological research, the
a flat-faced dog’ ukbwg.org.uk) and by truly into the Big Data age. We now use VetCompass team developed a secure
contributing to evidence-based updates machine-learning models of language system for the transfer of anonymised
to Kennel Club breed standards as to identify cases for research and to patient records from practices to a
well as to breed health plans at The understand the subtle contexts in which central database.
Kennel Club. veterinarians mention diseases without VetCompass is a community that
implying that their patient suffers from it.
Launched in 2016, the ‘VetCompass is committed to open access to all
Australia’ project extended the RVC’s We have also created diagnostic tools, information generated from our research.
international vision for companion such as an endocrine prediction model, Papers are open access for free
animal health data collection for that can calculate the probability of worldwide impact and are readily findable
disease monitoring and surveillance. future diagnosis, based on case notes. on the VetCompass library. In addition,
VetCompass Australia supports We also created a tool for vets which most papers have an accompanying
research projects at all seven Australian facilitates the process of clinically coding infographic that summarises the major
veterinary schools and has over 10 peer- patients and made this available free on findings in an easily digestible format and
reviewed publications. the internet. that are open access for anyone to share.
VetCompass has also extended its THE CRITICAL ROLE OF THE A free VetCompass app can
research interests from dogs and cats VETERINARY COMMUNITY be downloaded to IOS or android
to also cover a wide range of exotics, phones that enable students to enhance
with current projects exploring the Prior to VetCompass, the full potential their clinical reasoning skills by exploring
health of ferrets, rabbits, guinea pigs, for the vast wealth of animal health data the anonymised clinical records of
rats, tortoises and snakes. VetCompass recorded and stored by practices was over 20,000 dogs from the real first
projects are also researching the health largely untapped. This represented a opinion world.
and care of horses and cattle. huge loss for animal welfare, where Find out more at www.rvc.ac.uk/
a deficiency of good evidence was
vetcompass

19