Canadian start-up secures first partner for pet pain measurement tech

Canadian company Sylvester.ai has entered a long-term partnership with French firm CAPdouleur to enhance the management of companion animal pain.

Calgary, Alberta-based Sylvester.ai will deliver vital visual pain recognition technology to improve CAPdouleur’s pet health application, which enables users to identify, measure and manage acute and chronic pain in pets.

The CAPdouleur app allows pet owners and veterinarians to quickly detect pet pain and take immediate action. It is driven by real-time animal health data, veterinary insights and digital assessment grids, and now visual artificial intelligence through the Sylvester.ai agreement. The partnership enables CAPdouleur to accelerate its progress towards “addressing a notable gap” in veterinary medicine by offering bespoke solutions for alleviating animal pain.

This is the first commercial partner for Sylvester.ai. The company used visual artificial intelligence to create a patented feline comfort level classification system and algorithms that measure photos/videos of cats to veterinarian-validated facial pain scales. The firm’s chief executive Susan Groeneveld said the collaboration with CAPdouleur will provide additional context to train Sylvester.ai’s additional visual artificial intelligence models.

She remarked: “We strive to lead the global market for in-time insights that help accurately assess pet wellness, giving every animal a voice in their wellbeing.”

At the recent Kansas City Animal Health Corridor Summit, Ms Groeneveld suggested the firm’s means of pain detection based on the evaluation of cat facial signals is “revolutionizing digital care”. The company has so far assessed 350,000 photos of cats with 90% precision. It aims to “turn phones into powerful medical devices for pets”. She noted the start-up is in discussions with other potential partners in North America and Asia that want to harness the artificial intelligence-based software and integrate it into their apps. Sylvester.ai is currently raising a funding round to help its commercial efforts, while it is also starting to look at moving into the canine segment.

Fellow Canadian start-up BioTraceIT has a digital technology for the detection of pain in animals. PainTrace is a wearable monitor that quantifies both acute and chronic pain in animals. Another young business working in the pet pain measurement space is AniV8, which has a research partnershipry-practice.com/2020/new-pet-wearable-player-aniv8-collaborates-with-elanco-to-develop-its-wearable-technology with Elanco. The start-up is developing a collar- mounted device that uses algorithms and cloud-based data analytics to measure animal movement.