VetMeasure: Accurate health monitoring for pets
The MeasureON! harness allows veterinarians to monitor an animal’s heart and pulse rates, respiration and body temperature, activity, and ambient temperature and humidity to determine an animal’s condition following surgical procedures or illness. Photo courtesy of VetMeasure.
An Ames-based company, VetMeasure, has developed a harness that will improve real-time monitoring of a pet’s health by allowing veterinarians and pet owners to monitor the pet’s health remotely.
Most of today’s health monitoring devices for pets are collar-based. By being closer to the heart, VetMeasure’s MeasureON! harness design allows for a more accurate detection of an animal’s health statistics for veterinarians and pet owners.
“We learned through the research process, that we could get more reliable information using a harness figuration that gets closer to the heart, lungs and chest,” Maher said.
VetMeasure recently did a soft launch at the Wellington Veterinary Clinic, in Wellington, Colorado.
“Our focus has been on the veterinary profession first. We’re not really marketing directly to pet owners,” Maher said. “We want pet owners to learn about it from their veterinarians which will validate it and give it credibility rather than finding out about it online.”
Taking advantage of local resources
Maher is also the founder of GlobalVetLINK, a web-based software system that connects veterinarians, animal owners and producers, laboratories, pharmaceutical companies, feed distributors, auction markets and animal health officials.
VetMeasure and GlobalVetLINK were both founded in Iowa State University Research Park, an innovation community for new and expanding businesses.
“We’ve really benefited from the Pappajohn Center being able to provide us interns, resources, and other connections,” Maher said. “Just having a home at the research park gives us access to resources that we wouldn’t have if we were in some private office in Iowa.”
Biggest challenges?
“One of the bigger challenges has been how we interpret that data when we’re dealing with all the various breeds,” Maher said. “We’ve gone through iterations and a learning process and how to deal with that. So that’s probably been the biggest challenge because everyone doesn’t have the same kind of dog.”
Future Plans?
“We went through our first funding round last year and closed on $500,000,” Maher said. “By the end of 2018, our goal is to have our equity funding closed and be moving on to the commercialization stage, bringing on full-time employees, and beginning to launch in December through March tradeshow season.”
VetMeasure plans to eventually take the same platform and apply it to other species and have begun research at Iowa State’s dairy farm.
“We know that there’s a need of objective real-time data on calves,” said Maher. “So that you can, ahead of clinical signs, see that an animal is beginning to dip in terms of their health.”
