In recent years the farming industry has worked hard to ensure animal health and welfare, improve consumer trust, and reduce antimicrobial use, all while driving productivity.
According to modern world tendencies, ensuring animals’ safety becomes a priority. Nowadays the outcome we get from animals is not the main thing that counts - people learned that we need to take proper care of domesticated creatures’ health and help them live comfortably. That also helps to increase productivity while decreasing costs and land outgoings.
So the given requirements linked the world to an innovative approach in farming and started the process on the optimal digital solutions creation.
Let’s talk about the main aspects this topic can be divided into. A key component to the profound understanding of the industry is the categorization of the innovation types that are implemented out there. Also, some explanation of how they can simplify our lives like other technologies. There were various solutions released on the market, so it’s useful to look through the most innovative ones and be updated with their technological diversity.
And, lastly, the part of the industry that needs a separate outlining are veterinary services implemented into livestock care on farms. The connection to humans is too tight so that it makes domestic animal health digitalization one of the core priorities.
What animal healthcare digital solutions are out there?
First of all - healthcare digital solutions are being continuously implemented, each covering some area related to animal healthcare, like communication improvement, data collection, and categorization with further analytics, etc. So, there are such main categories:
- Online vet consultancy services;
- Pharmaceutical catalogs;
- Data collection services;
- E-agriculture web solutions (farm outturn and productivity magnification);
- Disease spreading surveillance.
Usually mentioned solutions are used by public or private organizations to enhance performance, prevent disease spreading, or better decision making based on the collected data.
Brainwired, Dilepix, FarmSee facilitates and Transport Genie are some examples of digital health companies that work with animals. They offer health monitoring for livestock, herd management, non-contact weighting services, and in-transit tracking.
Veterinary services digital transformation. How can it be used and why has it become popular recently?
Non-digitalized veterinary services usually require physical meetings for check-ups. And even though face-to-face communication and diagnostics are most informative, it is not most efficient, especially in times of pandemics and other complicating circumstances. With the industry’s digitalization, the animals can receive timely vet help faster and it can be adjusted more frequently. Various digital solutions are now in development and they aim to ensure constant monitoring and analysis of animal health data.
For example, such products were represented in a virtual exhibition at Animal AgTech Innovation Summit that took place in March 2021.
OneCup AI - a company that has developed animal facial recognition which is used to track stock individuality and analyzes health metrics, its growth, and other critical indexes.
FarrPro - developed a platform that creates microclimate on a given farm to reduce piglet mortality and improve their welfare. It performs better control over disease outbreaks and helps to develop vaccines rapidly.
In such a case the need for a doctor can be either spotted out on earlier stages of some disease or a remote treatment option can be established. It can help tremendously to save time, costs and prevent severe conditions for animals - that’s what makes the popularity part.
Potential of animal health industry data collection and why does the feedback matters that much.
When crucial indicators are established and constantly monitored - it leads to better healthcare and overall well-being or is used as an illness prevention tool. Veterinary clinics can collect feedback and data about their patients to correct the treatment or develop new methods of care. Also, if all the collected data is analyzed, the results can be useful for business planning and all the gaps well-displayed.
Examples of such data collection approaches are vet clinics, which will develop applications where the information about the treatment outcome or animal health condition is collected, usually in the form of feedback after some treatment. Using such applications the clinics will have the base for treatment analysis and its further correction for its better efficiency.
As another example, according to the AgTech Summit, 4 most innovative solutions for animal healthcare were represented by:
- Aquafort - a Canadian company that has developed a data analytics platform that can predict the ecosystem changes to lower fish mortality rates and helps to prevent 50 million metric tons that are currently a threat to global food security.
- Armenta - an Israeli company that has developed the first non-antibiotic treatment for mastitis which is a disease, causing a 6$ million loss annually in the U.S. every year. By using acoustic pulse technology they have reached 70% cure rated and increased milk production by 10%.
- iYOTAH Solutions - U.S.-based company that has a service platform created to connect different databases and stakeholders dedicated to creating animal protein value chain and building actionable solutions that’ll enhance the profitability and help to meet sustainability.
- Precision Livestock Technologies - another U.S.-based company that has created machine vision and artificial intelligence platform that helps to optimize feeding, have enough data for nutritional accuracy, save on labor and indicate when the veterinarian service is needed.
The livestock agricultural aspect of digital products and how it impacts the animals involved in farming.
When it comes to agriculture animal production, what usually matters is the result, which depends directly on animal wellness. Indexes monitoring tools help to see the overall producing picture and correct the approach in a suitable way. As well it brings to smallest health aspects tracking which reflects positively on animal welfare and helps to reach international standards of animal well-being compliance.
As we may see from all the digital products mentioned above - most of them are developed to assist exactly the farming aspect of the animal-related business. And the reason for that is the lack of global optimization for such business owners. With the market needs increasing, the old-fashioned methods of your production tracking become outdated. And, of course, the resolution was found in the digital world that can be used as a synonym to this desired optimization.
Summing up
Nowadays many aspects of our lives are optimized along with the requirements of a modern world and one of the most common tendencies is digitalization necessity. Not all the processes in animal health care can be automated and exclude human care. However, with all the benefits it brings - such an action should be at least considered.
Feel free to reach us out as here at Bitcom we have expertise in animal health digitalization and are making active input into the process.