Quality assessment of fish vaccine data in the Norwegian Veterinary Prescription Register (VetReg)
Abstract Background Vaccination of farmed salmonids has been an integral part of preventing infectious diseases in Norway’s aquaculture industry. In Norway, vaccine usage is regulated by the government. There is a need to monitor vaccine usage for both regulatory and research purposes, at local and...
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BMC
2025-01-01
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| Series: | BMC Veterinary Research |
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| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1186/s12917-024-04460-7 |
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| author | Trishang Udhwani Katharine R. Dean Ingunn Sommerset Kari Olli Helgesen |
| author_facet | Trishang Udhwani Katharine R. Dean Ingunn Sommerset Kari Olli Helgesen |
| author_sort | Trishang Udhwani |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Abstract Background Vaccination of farmed salmonids has been an integral part of preventing infectious diseases in Norway’s aquaculture industry. In Norway, vaccine usage is regulated by the government. There is a need to monitor vaccine usage for both regulatory and research purposes, at local and national scales. The Norwegian Veterinary Prescription Register (VetReg) is a national database that includes all prescriptions of medicines to animals dispensed by pharmacies and all medicines used for food producing animals by veterinarians. This study aimed to evaluate the quality of fish vaccination data reported to VetReg in 2016–2022. We considered the following attributes: completeness, validity, and timeliness. For external validation, we compared the data in VetReg to wholesaler statistics. Results Pharmacies reported fish vaccines to VetReg in a variety of quantity units, including doses and volumes, which required us to harmonize the data to a single unit. It was not possible to harmonize the quantity units for nine percent of the records, which were mainly bath vaccines reported in doses. We identified specific issues that required manual editing of the units of 1 percent of the records. We validated individual variables such as product codes and location identifiers using external registers. The ‘number of animals’ variable was inconsistent for 31 percent of the records. The coverage of vaccine data in VetReg ranged from 81 to 113 percent for the ten most sold vaccines in 2020–2022, as compared to wholesales statistics. For the timeliness, we found that 75 percent of the records were submitted within 25 days for all years. Conclusions Overall, we found that the fish vaccination data in VetReg was of sufficient quality to monitor injectable vaccine usage at hatcheries after 2020. We identified issues at the product level, with bath vaccines, and with single variables (number of animals, weight, and species). We recommend that quality can be improved by reporting all vaccines in volume rather than doses, reporting a single vaccine prescription per report, and including a deadline for pharmacies to report in the legislation. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-93ae297446ac462cb2bdf6fc5bf785b8 |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 1746-6148 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-01-01 |
| publisher | BMC |
| record_format | Article |
| series | BMC Veterinary Research |
| spelling | doaj-art-93ae297446ac462cb2bdf6fc5bf785b82025-01-19T12:27:13ZengBMCBMC Veterinary Research1746-61482025-01-0121111310.1186/s12917-024-04460-7Quality assessment of fish vaccine data in the Norwegian Veterinary Prescription Register (VetReg)Trishang Udhwani0Katharine R. Dean1Ingunn Sommerset2Kari Olli Helgesen3Norwegian Veterinary InstituteNorwegian Veterinary InstituteNorwegian Veterinary InstituteNorwegian Veterinary InstituteAbstract Background Vaccination of farmed salmonids has been an integral part of preventing infectious diseases in Norway’s aquaculture industry. In Norway, vaccine usage is regulated by the government. There is a need to monitor vaccine usage for both regulatory and research purposes, at local and national scales. The Norwegian Veterinary Prescription Register (VetReg) is a national database that includes all prescriptions of medicines to animals dispensed by pharmacies and all medicines used for food producing animals by veterinarians. This study aimed to evaluate the quality of fish vaccination data reported to VetReg in 2016–2022. We considered the following attributes: completeness, validity, and timeliness. For external validation, we compared the data in VetReg to wholesaler statistics. Results Pharmacies reported fish vaccines to VetReg in a variety of quantity units, including doses and volumes, which required us to harmonize the data to a single unit. It was not possible to harmonize the quantity units for nine percent of the records, which were mainly bath vaccines reported in doses. We identified specific issues that required manual editing of the units of 1 percent of the records. We validated individual variables such as product codes and location identifiers using external registers. The ‘number of animals’ variable was inconsistent for 31 percent of the records. The coverage of vaccine data in VetReg ranged from 81 to 113 percent for the ten most sold vaccines in 2020–2022, as compared to wholesales statistics. For the timeliness, we found that 75 percent of the records were submitted within 25 days for all years. Conclusions Overall, we found that the fish vaccination data in VetReg was of sufficient quality to monitor injectable vaccine usage at hatcheries after 2020. We identified issues at the product level, with bath vaccines, and with single variables (number of animals, weight, and species). We recommend that quality can be improved by reporting all vaccines in volume rather than doses, reporting a single vaccine prescription per report, and including a deadline for pharmacies to report in the legislation.https://doi.org/10.1186/s12917-024-04460-7AquacultureVaccinationData validationAnimal health dataSalmonBiosecurity |
| spellingShingle | Trishang Udhwani Katharine R. Dean Ingunn Sommerset Kari Olli Helgesen Quality assessment of fish vaccine data in the Norwegian Veterinary Prescription Register (VetReg) BMC Veterinary Research Aquaculture Vaccination Data validation Animal health data Salmon Biosecurity |
| title | Quality assessment of fish vaccine data in the Norwegian Veterinary Prescription Register (VetReg) |
| title_full | Quality assessment of fish vaccine data in the Norwegian Veterinary Prescription Register (VetReg) |
| title_fullStr | Quality assessment of fish vaccine data in the Norwegian Veterinary Prescription Register (VetReg) |
| title_full_unstemmed | Quality assessment of fish vaccine data in the Norwegian Veterinary Prescription Register (VetReg) |
| title_short | Quality assessment of fish vaccine data in the Norwegian Veterinary Prescription Register (VetReg) |
| title_sort | quality assessment of fish vaccine data in the norwegian veterinary prescription register vetreg |
| topic | Aquaculture Vaccination Data validation Animal health data Salmon Biosecurity |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1186/s12917-024-04460-7 |
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