The DECIDE Cattle Barometer: a cross-country monitoring and decision support tool for respiratory pathogens

Bovine respiratory disease (BRD) remains one of the most impactful health challenges in cattle, driving antimicrobial use, economic losses, and welfare concerns. Effective control requires insight into circulating pathogens. However, differences in sampling strategies, diagnostic methods, and data formats hinder cross-country interpretation. During a European stakeholder consultation, farmers called for simple tools that clearly communicate trends in pathogen occurence, while veterinarians stressed the need for data-driven dashboards that turn complex data into practical insights to support evidence-based advice and farmer-veterinarian collaboration. To address these priorities, we aimed to develop and evaluate the Cattle Barometer: an interactive, cross-country dashboard integrating laboratory-confirmed BRD pathogen data from multiple European diagnostic laboratories.

Diagnostic laboratories in Europe provided anonymised test results from cattle with respiratory disease. Data included identified pathogens, sample type, diagnostic method, date, and location proxies. Heterogeneous datasets were harmonised using scripted pipelines, including cleaning, recoding, anonymisation, and transformation into standardised formats. Farm-level monthly pathogen positivity was calculated and incorporated into a dashboard. Usability of the first prototype was evaluated through a survey (n = 25), including a System Usability Scale (SUS) assessment, open-ended questions, and task-based testing among veterinarians, researchers, laboratory scientists, advisors, and farmers.

Fourteen datasets from six laboratories, representing over 8000 farms sampled between 2016 and 2024, were integrated into one dataset. The dashboard enables interactive analysis of trends in proportion of positive samples by time, location, production type, and diagnostic methodology. The survey showed the tool to be promising, but still requiring refinement to achieve optimal user-friendliness (SUS score 60, 60% successfully completed the assigned task). Usability feedback highlighted strengths in data accessibility, but identified opportunities for improvement in navigation, visual load, date filtering, and interface scaling. Most respondents indicated they would use the tool in the future, and the majority were comfortable with the tool being available for veterinarians (88%) and farmers (72%).

The Cattle Barometer provides an open-source framework for BRD monitoring and decision-making across Europe, with potential extension to other species and diseases. Future development should focus on automation to enable continuous data streams with daily updates and thereby enhance its surveillance value.