Published: 28 Mar 2016 | Last Updated: 30 Sep 2019 14:33:46

The annual Meeting of the Society for Veterinary Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine (SVEPM) is the highlight of the European epidemiology year and this year it was held in Elsinore, Denmark on March 16-18th 2016. Each year epidemiology researchers, animal health scientists and economists and veterinary public health specialists gather to discuss the latest topics within the field. This year, one of the major topics discussed was developing methods to evaluate antimicrobial usage and resistance in companion and food animals species across Europe. Researchers from the RVC's Veterinary Epidemiology, Economics and Public Health (VEEPH) research group contributed to several debates on this topic, including discussions on the development of systematic reporting of antimicrobial usage in veterinary species, and the opportunity that the VetCompass programme offers to do this. In a recent VetCompass study supported by Veterinary Medicines Directorate, we have analysed the frequency of antimicrobial use in dogs and cats attending primary-care practices in the UK, and a peer-reviewed publication is under preparation. The general consensus of discussions at SVEPM was that large scale merged databases of primary-care veterinary clinical data offered high promise to improve our understanding of antimicrobial usage in veterinary species, including companion animals.

Below is a photo of the members of RVC's VEEPH research group attending the conference, including Drs Dan O'Neill and Dave Brodbelt (right from the poster) from VetCompass team.