Join us for a webinar with Laura Haase, MEng :
Designing Veterinary Decision Support Systems: Insights from a User-Centered Approach
Veterinary decision support systems (VDSS), such as those aiding diagnostics and triage, have the potential to reduce psychological pressure and stress that veterinarians experience due to high workloads. Despite their promise, VDSS currently remain underutilized in veterinary practice compared to their human medical counterparts.
A systematic literature review analyzing the characteristics of existing VDSS reveals a strong focus on systems designed for use in livestock management, often by professional animal keepers. Systems are described to be used before or instead of consulting a veterinarian. Most current systems are based on rule-based logic and expert knowledge, with limited information on rigorous system evaluation or real-world testing. Notably, no system in the reviewed literature was tailored specifically for pet owners – an increasingly significant group investing time and resources in animal health.
To address this gap, a user-centered development process for a VDSS is presented, using the example of a triage application for non-professional animal owners. Key phases of the design process, including user research, requirement elicitation, prototyping, and usability testing are described, all aimed at aligning the system’s functionality with the expectations, behaviors, and informational needs of the target group.
This approach provides veterinarians, developers, and researchers with a transferable blueprint for designing more usable, accepted, and context-sensitive VDSS. By incorporating human-computer interaction principles and end-user perspectives, a practical blueprint for creating contextually relevant and user-accepted systems is offered.
About the presenter:
Laura Haase is a computer scientist from Germany who completed a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Engineering. Before taking on the role of research associate at the Department of Computer Science at the Berlin School of Economics and Law, she contributed to the development of software, processes, and API infrastructure for clinical development at Bayer AG. Through her leisure activities involving horses, she developed an interest in applying computer science to veterinary medicine, which led her to complete her master's thesis on developing an mHealth application for horse owners. To further her research in this area, she subsequently decided to pursue a doctorate in medical informatics at the Technical University of Dresden. Her professional focus is on veterinary informatics and the human-centered development and design of human-computer interfaces.
About the AVI Webinar Series: The purpose of the AVI Webinar Series is to provide a vendor-agnostic forum for education and networking. Join us to learn from academic, industry, and government organizations who are using information technology and data science to improve the lives of animals and veterinary healthcare teams.
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