EAHAO #5. Diagnostics - "So, now what?!" with Gary Anderson, DVM

"Diagnostics" provide the essential guidance that veterinarians (and the producers they work alongside) need to address diseases facing the animals in their care.

 Dr. Gary Anderson has been practicing veterinary medicine for decades.  In this short podcast, he describes why diagnostics make all-the-difference for the modern veterinarian and producer.

Recorded February 2025 — 04:58 minutes.

Medgene - it's a new day for animal health care!
https://medgenelabs.com

The opinions expressed are those of the individual(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policies or positions of Medgene.  Potency and efficacy of prescription platform product biologics have not been established. This product is prepared for use only by a veterinarian prescription.

Medgene’s prescription platform system ensures that all the ingredients that go into our vaccines are animal origin free.

©VST Labs for Medgene
www.MedgeneLabs.com
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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to Every Animal Has an Owner of a Large Animal Podcast for veterinarians and the people that depend on them.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

How diagnostics can work for the benefit of a producer or an animal owner and a veterinarian and how they how diagnostics really do explain so now what or help explain so now what. And for me it's it's difficult to get the so now what um unless we and unless we have good diagnostics. So I think where we are today is much better than we were his we've been historically, as particularly for production animal medicine, but but for all diagnostics and animal health. So often the diagnostics have come too slowly or not completely enough for the veterinarian to address the problem at hand. So it's wonderful today in that we have better sampling techniques, we have better shipping techniques, we can get a sample from the feedlot or the cow calf operation much more quickly than we could have um 20 years ago. Now, once the sample's in the lab, some really good things have happened in the last decade to make the results and analysis of the results more um quickly available and even more accurate. All of that then ties in really nicely with okay, we have better diagnostic results, so now we can answer. Um, so now what? Without an accurate answer when it comes to diagnostics or analysis of the diagnostics, it's difficult for the veterinarian to determine what would be next. Um, now we can put a plan together to rectify the sick the outbreak, whether it's sickness or whether there are some dead animals involved. So for me, this move forward with molecular diagnostics, bioinformatics have really caused us to um move diagnostics to a more timely resulting, and that more timely resulting then and analysis then allows a veterinarian to be more proactive than they've ever been able to be before. Um I guess part of it is not only timeliness, but it's accuracy. And with molecular technology, there's increasing accuracy to the results and the analysis of those results. Um tying that all together allows the veterinarian to actually do diagnostics and say, so now what? Now we now we're doing this, now we have a plan that we can put in place. I think our industries are realizing the huge potential and benefit of doing surveillance testing. So if you look at the various opportunities to test animals, you can test them early before they're sick, like upon arrival to a feedlot or uh wherever they're headed, or you can analyze samples that are taken when they're sick, or even after they've died. You go all at all of those stages, diagnostics are important, but in my mind, the surveillance diagnostics are where the rubber really meets the road in being able to answer, so now what? Because those surveillance samples give us um information because of timeliness in the lab, uh, and analysis in the lab, those surveillance samples can begin to provide tools to the veterinarian for getting ahead of an outbreak or ahead of a disease, or preventing it even potentially with a vaccine or another treatment protocol.