SIGMA A comprehensive animal disease data collection approach

The European Commission is asking EFSA for scientific and technical support in the epidemiological analysis of animal disease outbreaks (i.e. African swine fever, lumpy skin disease and avian influenza) and to assess surveillance data (i.e. Echinococcus multilocularis and avian influenza). At the moment, since EFSA data models are not completely harmonised; EFSA's data warehouse is not connected with the EC's Animal Disease Notification System (ADNS); and data submission and validation is not automated, the animal health data collections are labour intensive for both EFSA and the data providers of the Member States. EFSA's aim is to work together with Member States on the technical aspects of ‘ad hoc animal health data collections’, in order to (i) reduce the manual input of the data to be submitted by the Member States to EFSA; (ii) avoid double reporting to EFSA and, possibly, to other systems; (iii) Provide the Members States with instruments to produce automatically draft national reports on animal health and surveillance in a protected environment (secure connections, log in credentials) to ensure data protection; (iv) increase the quality and the comparability of the data received from the Member States; (v) shorten the time to retrieve up‐to‐date data, relevant for risk assessment purposes, and to release sound scientific advice. This report aims at providing the reader with the main elements to understand the SIGMA project and at briefly describing the contents of the Animal Health Network meeting and at capturing the feedbacks having a direct impact on the strategy.