ViewBovine: A Microservices-Powered Web Application to Support Interactive Investigation of Bovine Tuberculosis Infection Pathways

Bovine tuberculosis (bTB) is a chronic infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium bovis (M. bovis) which affects cattle and a broad range of other mammalian hosts, including humans. Animal health authorities face the challenge of identifying epidemiologically linked cases with scattered or incomplete information. Here, we report a novel micro services-powered web application, ViewBovine, to support investigations into bTB incidents by government veterinary inspectors and epidemiologists. ViewBovine is powered by microservices that integrate genetically related isolates of M. bovis and cattle movement information, with web-based visualisation and interactive features. This enables users to quickly investigate, evaluate and gain insights into the relatedness of different bTB cases. We present an evaluation of this tool using three cases which demonstrate the strengths of the tool and showcase its usage in practice. Although ViewBovine is designed for bTB, it demonstrates the successful design and implementation of an interactive web-based application for routine monitoring of pathogen infections and outbreak investigation in a timely manner.