We wanted to 1) create an online game for teaching outbreak investigations for future veterinarians to promote readiness, 2) increase the know-how of veterinarians in outbreak solving for increasing their abilities in future outbreaks and their attractiveness in the labor market, 3) make a climate-friendly and study-style-friendly teaching tool giving enjoyment in learning, instant feedback, and increase freedom of time and travel of students, 4) enhance digital readiness in our faculties and increase collaboration between and within our faculties when creating the outbreak scenarios, 5) promote analytical epidemiology teaching since statistical and mathematical methods, inherent in epidemiology, can also be included in our game scenarios, 6) promote teaching of animal health legislation since that is also inherent for many outbreak scenarios, and 7) promote life-long learning of veterinarians by giving them a world-wide-accessible website to test and rehearse their skills in outbreak investigations by using the game scenarios created during the project.
We applied for this project because animal disease outbreaks can be disastrous not only for animals, their owners, the economy of the country, but also for people in zoonotic pandemics. The Animal Health regulation (EU2016/429) requires all veterinarians to prepare and act in case of animal disease outbreaks. Veterinary epidemiology educators from Finland (University of Helsinki, HU), Estonia (Estonian University of Life Sciences, EMU), Sweden (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, SLU), and Norway (Norwegian University of Life Sciences, NMBU) wanted to enhance the outbreak investigation training using real-life simulation methods. Collaborating with MedEdu Ltd, a Finnish company known for developing a patient simulation game used by all five Finnish medical faculties, they aimed to innovate veterinary education by creating an Outbreak Investigation Game OIG. To our knowledge, no similar games exist globally, except one pilot game with few cases that Finnish veterinary students used during 2015-2023. It had ageing technology and lacked maintenance plan. The expanded range of outbreak scenarios in the maintained OIG equips future veterinarians with the skills necessary for effective collaboration during potential outbreaks.