Animal health data management (Scientific and Technical Review, Vol. 42, 2023)

Good decision-making in disease control requires good evidence. The success of animal disease management is intimately connected to the quality of the data on which both strategic and operational decisions are based. The collection of studies and reviews in this issue illustrates the when, why and how of the use of data and the application of quantitative techniques. The studies range from the macro (population) to the microbiological and molecular and, at each resolution, issues relating to data and the application of a quantitative approach are pivotal to sound scientific discourse and inference. The issue addresses several important features ranging from governance considerations to species-specific issues through to examples from several domains and, importantly, the relevance and leadership of WOAH in key aspects of data in surveillance, disease control and policy. With studies from the food animal sector and from wildlife species and companion animal programmes, spanning from whole genome sequencing to geographic information systems, and with statistical, mathematical, information and data sciences, there will be lessons to be learned from comparing and contrasting these many contributions.