Data distribution in public veterinary service: health and safety challenges push for context-aware systems.

Background: Today's globalised and interconnected world is characterized by intertwined and quickly evolving relationships between animals, humans and their environment and by an escalating number of accessible data for public health. The public veterinary services must exploit new modeling and decision strategies to face these changes. The organization and control of data flows have become crucial to effectively evaluate the evolution and safety concerns of a given situation in the territory.

Information and organization in public health institutes: an ontology-based modeling of the entities in the reception-analysis-report phases.

Background: Ontologies are widely used both in the life sciences and in the management of public and private companies. Typically, the different offices in an organization develop their own models and related ontologies to capture specific tasks and goals. Although there might be an overall coordination, the use of distinct ontologies can jeopardize the integration of data across the organization since data sharing and reusability are sensitive to modeling choices.