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

This paper describes the outline, knowledge acquisition and possible use of a knowledge-based system (KBS), called Zovex, for herd-health management support on growing and fattening pig farms. Zovex provides farm advisors with knowledge about the interaction between disease problems in a pig herd, and environmental and managerial factors on the farm influencing manifestation of disease. The first possible use of Zovex is that it can serve as an advisory tool in disease problem-solving. For that the system consists of (i) a health module triggered by the identified herd-health and production problem(s), (ii) a farm layout module containing data about the pig compartment 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 management, hygiene management, housing management and climate management. The output of Zovex is a list of risk factors present on the farm, and recommendations 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 identify problems as early as possible. Within this tool, user selected subsets of hygiene, climate or housing management risk factors are analysed. The type of output is similar to the problem tool of Zovex. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.