Abstract
Preventive measures in human healthcare are recognized as a means of providing early detection of disease, however, the veterinary profession has not been as effective in communicating the benefits of preventive measures to pet owners. Readily available pet healthcare information on the internet, owners not understanding that regular health evaluations can ensure the well-being of their pets and owners confusing the signs of chronic disease with normal aging have contributed to declining numbers of veterinary visits. The use of web-based generic health–related quality of life (HRQL) measures to evaluate health status (wellness) remotely could facilitate veterinary preventive medicine. This publication describes the development and practical application of an integrated alert system for an online generic HRQL measurement instrument (VetMetrica™) which generates scores in four domains of HRQL—Energetic/Enthusiastic (E/E), Happy/Content (H/C), Active/Comfortable (A/C), and Calm/Relaxed (C/R)—for 2 age groups (young/middle-aged, ≤7 years and old, ≥8 years). The alert provides an early warning, via email to owners, that a potentially significant deterioration in health status has occurred. The model accurately predicted the health status of 93 and 83% of sick young/middle aged and old dogs respectively, with healthy dogs predicted with 83% accuracy. HRQL data, collected via a white-labeled veterinary clinic branded app designed to facilitate connected care between owner and veterinarian, were analyzed for 6,108 dogs, aged between 6 weeks and 16 years. Of these 5,002 were deemed to be in perfect health by their owners, yet the alert was triggered for 1,343 (27%) of these, 75% of which were young/middle-aged and 25% were old, indicating that acute injuries notwithstanding, many middle aged dogs may have been suffering from undetected chronic disease such as osteoarthritis. This work has demonstrated that the use of VetMetrica™ delivered via the PetDialog™ app, which supports 24/7 remote health monitoring is an efficient way for vets to provide all their owners with the opportunity to monitor their animal's wellness throughout their lifetime, providing the vet with a mechanism to identify health problems early while stimulating owners to be more proactive in seeking veterinary attention.
Highlights
Preventive medicine in the food animal sector plays an important role in preventing and controlling important diseases of food animals and humans and involves a number of disciplines including epidemiology and public health
Recent research developments highlight the value of Patient–Generated Health Information (PGHI), described as data created and recorded, by patients, family or personal caregivers, whereby health data can be shared with a health care provider via a smartphone health app or a patient portal accessed in the home [1]
One for young/middle aged dogs (≤7 years) and one for old dogs (≥ 8 years), were developed to identify whether dogs were sick or healthy based on four health—related quality of life (HRQL) domain scores derived via an online instrument for monitoring HRQL in dogs [9]
Summary
Preventive medicine in the food animal sector plays an important role in preventing and controlling important diseases of food animals and humans and involves a number of disciplines including epidemiology and public health. According to the 2011 Bayer Veterinary Care Usage Study this decline can, in part, be attributed to the readily available pet healthcare information on the internet, which for many owners is their first port of call when their pets show signs of illness At best, this results in a delayed veterinary visit when symptoms persist, but may represent a missed visit if the animal improves. In 2010 the North American Veterinary Medical Education Consortium recommended that there should be more focus on wellness and disease prevention in veterinary undergraduate education These measures are very valuable, but Spofford et al [7] suggest that there is still a need for research “to determine the impact of preventive health care in animals and to distinguish effective preventive health-care services from less effective and ineffective ones.”. In contrast to disease–specific HRQL instruments which have an application limited to sick populations, generic instruments measure the health status of healthy as well as sick subjects and are the only option when co-morbidities exist in the same subject
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
