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Information systems and databases

TSN – The Animal Disease Reporting System

Institute of Epidemiology

Every year, numerous notifiable and reportable animal diseases occur in Germany. For scientific assessment and effective control as well as to fulfil the national and international requirements with regard to the notification of these diseases, the Institute of Epidemiology (IfE) has developed the Animal Disease Reporting System (TSN). TSN is used by the responsible veterinary authorities of the districts and federal states and by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL).

Since 1995, TSN has been used as the standard electronic system for registration of all notifiable animal diseases and since 1997 also for reportable animal diseases. Since then, TSN has been subject to a dynamic development; the continuous dialogue with the users in the veterinary authorities has contributed considerably to the gradual optimization of data quality, functional range and user-friendliness. Today, the third generation of TSN is used.

While TSN 1.0 had been designed as a simple reporting system, the second generation already used modern internet technologies, a geographic information system (GIS) and the first tools for an effective crisis management. The current version TSN 3.0 has been extended as follows:

  1. User administration: For both components of TSN (TSN-Online and TSNVeterinäramt) the TSN administrators of the districts and federal states now have the right to assign gradual user rights themselves.
  2. Reporting of animal diseases: Reporting is done exclusively internet-based by use of a safe transmission protocol, as used e.g. for internet banking.
  3. In the newly developed crisis module, an application has been introduced that allows the veterinary authorities to plan and document all legal measures in case of an outbreak, to overlook the situation as a whole, and thus to control the disease efficiently.
  4. Geographic information systems: the various functions of the map explorer have been extended and optimized. The disease situation can now be visualized for example by means of Google Maps and Google Earth.