Help us improve information exchange in veterinary medicine

The Association for Veterinary Informatics (AVI) has formed an Interoperability Committee to bring together stakeholders that have a vested interest in sharing and creating common data standards within the veterinary profession. Through our combined efforts we can realize our vision of seeing information turned into insights and actions that benefit the health and wellbeing of animals and people.

Interoperability is the ability of two or more systems to

exchange health information and use the information once it is received.

Addressing Unmet Needs in Veterinary Health Information

The ”Why” of the AVI Interoperability Committee to promote the adoption of veterinary health information data standards, which complements the AVI mission “to guide and transform the veterinary profession in understanding, using, and extending the practice of informatics.” Benefits of improving adoption of veterinary health information data standards include improving practice management system interoperability, implementing machine learning, and advancing artificial intelligence.

Benefits of improved information exchange

Together with like-minded stakeholders from various disciplines in veterinary medicine, we believe we can raise the bar in access to, and exchange of, information, for the betterment of animal health.

Rapid exchange of individual medical records facilitates improved emergency and referral care. Trends in patient populations within practices can be used to streamline operations, improve insurance utilization, and provide decision support to clinicians. Aggregated records can be used to identify emerging diseases and characterize the epidemiology of important diseases across animal populations. Additionally, there is a need to improve antimicrobial stewardship through understanding where and how medications are being prescribed. These are just some of the situations in veterinary medicine that can be improved by greater interoperability.