DECIDE, a five-year Horizon 2020 project, will develop data-driven decision support tools that offer robust and early signals of disease emergence and options for diagnostic confirmation. Moreover, options will be provided for controlling the disease along with their implications in terms of disease spread, economic burden and animal welfare.

In the quest for improved animal health management, information from different fields of knowledge is critical for rational decision-making. By recognising that such information is often absent or inadequate, the European-funded DECIDE project, aims to develop data-driven tools to fill in that gap and provide animal health managers with the suitable knowledge on the epidemiological, economic, welfare and social aspects of animal diseases, with a focus on the infectious non-EU-regulated. The originated data flows should lead to useful outcomes that can aid disease prioritisation and indicate cost-efficient options for their prevention and/or control.

The GBADs (Global Burden of Animal Diseases), a global programme, is particularly interested in these aspects and is dedicated in gathering the necessary data and developing an innovative methodology to determine the economic burden of animal diseases. The remit of both DECIDE and GBADs overlap in that the end goal is to assist informed decision making towards improved animal health management. The data flows generated by DECIDE and the GBADs methodologies are cornerstones in the deciding governmental and non-governmental responses to animal health issues.

For more information on the DECIDE project, you can access their Website here