The MSHMP team would like to announce changes that will be coming to the weekly report in July, 2019 as we start a new monitoring year. Since mid 2017 we have been working towards switching the MSHMP database and report out of Excel and into a structured query language (SQL) database, with the report created using the programs R and LateX. We will officially make the transition starting July fifth and are excited to introduce you to some of the changes you will be seeing in the upgraded version of the MSHMP report.
The decision to transition into an SQL database and create the report with R and LateX was made primarily for 3 reasons: 1) Storage and query capabilities, 2) Reliability and 3) Automatization of the report generation process. Altogether this will improve the quality and speed of data management to continue to enable the project to grow in a constant manner.
The general contents and layout of the report will remain unaltered. The main change in the report is its overall appearance as the style, detail information and legends have been altered. The SVV chart show now only data from veterinary diagnostic laboratories. PRRSv Chart 3, incidence by Status, has been replaced by a new chart, PRRS Incidence Rate, to better reflect the status frequency of breaks.
The top paragraphs of the PRRSv and PEDv pages have been updated to more clearly reflect how systems are included in charts. We also show the amount of systems reporting each disease for the week out of the total number of systems, rather than out of the total included in a particular chart.
As a team we are very excited to launch our new more reliable and efficient database system and weekly report. We know it will enable our work to continue growing and improving, providing more value to the swine industry and associated communities. As a group we particularly want to acknowledge Post-Doc Juan Sanhueza and our IT Director Paulo Fioravante, the primary architects of the new system, and thank them for the immense amount of work they have done to make this possible.
