Zovex, a knowledge-integrated computer system to support health managementon pig farms

This paper describes the outline, knowledge acquisition and possible use of a knowledge-based system (KBS), called Zovex, for herd-health management s upport on growing and fattening pig farms. Zovex provides farm advisors wit h knowledge about the interaction between disease problems in a pig herd, a nd environmental and managerial factors on the farm influencing manifestati on of disease. The first possible use of Zovex is that it can serve as an a dvisory tool in disease problem-solving. For that the system consists of (i ) a health module triggered by the identified herd-health and production pr oblem(s), (ii) a farm layout module containing data about the pig compartme nt identification and layout, and (iii) four risk factor assessment modules to analyse the presence or absence of disease-associated factors. The risk factor assessment modules include knowledge about disease and infection ma nagement, hygiene management, housing management and climate management. Th e output of Zovex is a list of risk factors present on the farm, and recomm endations as to which risk factors are considered for interventions and how they should be changed. In addition to the problem-solving possibilities, Zovex can also be used as an advisory tool in preventive screening to ident ify problems as early as possible. Within this tool, user selected subsets of hygiene, climate or housing management risk factors are analysed. The ty pe of output is similar to the problem tool of Zovex. (C) 2000 Elsevier Sci ence B.V. All rights reserved.