I heard “30% of care is shifting into the home” again and again earlier this year when I attended the Consumer Electronics Show and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society meeting. Those conferences focused primarily on human medicine, but we’re also seeing a near parallel, if not accelerated, shift in veterinary care. Let’s dig into what the 30% could represent in our profession.
Companion animal health care has shifted in two main ways: remote patient monitoring and in-home diagnostics. Both are present in today’s high-tech litter boxes, feeders and collars. For example, Whisker’s Litter-Robot collects all sorts of information about a cat, from the time spent in the litter box to the frequency of visits to the pet’s weight. Hundreds of data points are recorded every day.
Technology companies understand the value of such information, especially if a cat shows tendencies indicating a particular renal disease. However, what’s missing in many cases is a direct connection to the veterinarian.
Feed Me, Please
Recently, my veterinarian wife and I went on vacation. We didn’t rely on our housesitter to tell us how our cat was doing. Instead, we had real-time weight data from our Litter-Robot. When we returned home, we knew our cat was down a half pound, so we adjusted her feeder to dispense an additional one-eighth cup of food to get her back to her ideal weight. No longer did we need to guess; we made a data-informed decision.
Smart feeders have been around for a while. Companies like Furbo and Petcube allow people to connect remotely with their pets. Furbo recently announced a feature that measures anxiety through a dog’s barking and alerts the owner to broken glass or similar dangers in the house.
A next-generation leap is about to hit the market with Companion. The smart camera/feeder trains new skills, such as sitting, staying and rolling over, and keeps dogs engaged when alone. The device also monitors dogs for orthopedic issues by tracking skeletal movements. On top of this, Companion provides body conditioning scores to gauge whether a dog is gaining or losing weight.
Meanwhile, smart collars have moved beyond location monitoring to gathering health data such as heart and respiratory rates. Collars like Whisker use algorithms to record activities such as scratching and sleeping. What’s really new is the potential to use laser-based ultrasound in a collar to monitor an animal’s glucose level. GlucoSound, developed for people, is one of many smartwatches whose technology could readily be in a pet’s smart collar.
Further afield are smart implants. Zimmer Biomet offers one of the first smart knee replacements for humans. Using proprietary algorithms, the company’s mymobility care management platform determines whether the user is behind, at or ahead of the expected recovery time. It does this by measuring gait, stride length and other metrics relative to a baseline and feeds that information wirelessly to the surgeon for remote monitoring.
Though Zimmer Biomet apparently hasn’t thought about veterinary applications, there is no reason the technology couldn’t be adapted for animals, especially in equine orthopedics.
Each of those technologies individually represents advancements toward more-informed companion animal decision making. Collectively, we’re seeing the potential for exponential growth in health outcomes.
For example, when we pair smart collars with smart litter boxes and smart feeders, we can track precise caloric requirements for managing the obesity epidemic hitting pets. By monitoring their activity and behavior over time, we’re better positioned to identify changes that could point to the early onset of orthopedic or neurological diseases. In addition, food trials during allergy tests don’t have to wait for hot spots to emerge if you can track when a dog or cat scratches.
Do-It-Yourself Technology
The ecosystem of remote patient monitoring is certain to fuel exponential growth in data —information that veterinary teams could incorporate into care plans. For example, remote monitoring might signal a disease before it manifests. Sometimes, however, early screening isn’t enough; we need advanced diagnostics.
More companies are moving into the home with data-emitting products designed to assist veterinary professionals in diagnosing diseases. Take, for instance, remote ultrasound technologies such as Butterfly iQ+ Vet and GE HealthCare’s recent acquisition, Caption Health. Butterfly’s ultrasound device is small enough to be plugged into an animal owner’s smartphone. “But wait,” you’re probably thinking, “what about proper probe handling?” Caption Health uses artificial intelligence and sensors to help guide inexperienced ultrasonographers to direct ultrasound at the right areas.
Other noninvasive tools, such as GI Logic and GutNote, monitor gastrointestinal health from outside the abdomen. GI Logic uses a biosensor that listens to a horse’s belly, detects and classifies signals, and then provides a measure of the digestive state. Similarly, for people, GutNote listens to the peristaltic motion of intestines to provide customized dietary recommendations to maximize a patient’s health.
Want more than just gut information? WITHaPET and Cotons Sense 1 feature a digital stethoscope that pet owners attach to the skin for 24/7 monitoring.
Another advancement involves at-home urinalysis, and it’s getting an upgrade in human medicine with companies like Vivoo, which provides real-time information about calcium, pH, protein, ketones, sodium and free radical levels. The data, combined with those from wearables, can provide customized diet recommendations.
Some at-home urinalysis tools come and go, but others are hitting the veterinary market through companies like MySimplePetLab and Affordable Pet Labs. That might raise this question in pet owners’ minds: Why go to the veterinarian when I can perform the tests myself?
To this point, I haven’t discussed the rise of genetic testing and its role in determining veterinary treatment plans.
More to Come
In sum, there is no shortage of companies utilizing a pet’s home as a care site. The challenge thus becomes: What are veterinary teams to do with all the data, and are they prepared for it to flood their computers? There are so many questions about integrations and verifiability.
When filling out the appointment book is difficult, we can see the value of any high-tech device that gets clients and pets to the hospital sooner. But when clinics are overbooked and devices alert clients to possible negative states involving their animals, where do they go then?
Is technology opening new opportunities for virtual care? Likely, but veterinary professionals need to capitalize on it.