ABOUT US

THE ILLINOIS SWINE HEALTH NETWORK IS A COLLABORATION BETWEEN THE ILLINOIS PORK PRODUCERS ASSOCIATION, THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF SWINE VETERINARIANS, AND THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN.

COMMUNICATION

Solutions almost always start with talking about it with all of the stakeholders. The primary goal of the ISHN is to promote and facilitate conversations about swine health across all stakeholders in the Illinois swine industry.

COLLABORATION

With a network established, and channels of communication open, we will strive to foster collaboration amongst participants to allow them to harness the power of the whole to address their specific challenges in their operations.

CONTEXT

Though communication and collaboration individual producers can gain context about how their operation fits in the wider world, what risks they face and what risks they pose to others.

CLARITY

Though context we will help individual producers make better decisions for their operation by having the foundation for solid, information based decisions.

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THE PROBLEM

WE HAVE DATA, BUT WE ARE CHALLENGED TO KNOW WHAT IT MEANS.

NOVEL DISEASE

Disease outbreaks are one of the least predictable causes of production losses for swine producers. In spite of massive investments of capital and time by producers to prevent new disease outbreaks they continue at a higher than acceptable rate.

UNTAPPED POTENTIAL

Rapid developments in diagnostic technology have created a flood of new information about the presence and characteristics of pathogens in swine herds. In most cases this rich data stream has not been synthesized to assist in systematic decision making at a herd, system and regional level because aggregating and analyzing the data has been labor intensive and technically challenging.

MISALLOCATED CAPITAL

The severe consequences of disease outbreaks coupled with the lack of data syntheses to guide decisions has led to disease prevention investments that have not resulted in the desired reduction in disease introductions. Just as important, this uncertainty has deferred or prevented investments in bio-security infrastructure by producers that are known to reduce risk because the magnitude of the impact cannot be estimated.

THE ANSWER LIES IN US

WHILE WE CAN ALL SEE OUR PART OF THE WORLD, IT IS HARD TO MAKE GOOD DECISIONS WITHOUT UNDERSTANDING THINGS HAPPENING IN THE WIDER WORLD AROUND US. TO CONTROL INFECTIOUS DISEASE IN PIG FARMS KNOWING WHAT’S IN THE WIDER WORLD IS A FIRST STEP TO BETTER UNDERSTANDING.

WHAT’S THE SOLUTION?

UNIFICATION

The first step in creating understanding is creating a common set of data with unified terms, definitions and data points to allow all participants to speak the same language.

AGGREGATION

The next step is to get all of that common data in a single place, allowing powerful tools to be applied across all of the available data.

VISUALIZATION

The final step is to make the results accessible and approachable to help us make better decisions. We will apply the Disease Bioportal® data management tool to visualize data for diseases endemic to the collective Illinois swine herd: Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS), Influenza (IAV-S) and Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus (PEDV). The Disease Bioportal® tool is a powerful web based tool that allows us to visualize the movement of specific strains of disease over time and space.

HAVE QUESTIONS?

WE HAVE ANSWERS. LET’S TALK!