AI-powered technology assesses cats’ well-being based on facial cues | Antelligence
Highlights:
Sylvester.ai has developed technology that uses artificial intelligence to evaluate feline pain or discomfort based on clinically validated veterinary pain scales.
The company offers the technology in an app for pet owners and also wants to integrate it with other pet tech platforms.
In the future, Sylvester.ai plans to expand the platform’s capabilities by adding new species and the ability to identify symptoms of specific diseases.
Sylvester.ai aims to improve feline care by helping cat parents better understand their pet’s facial cues.
The company has developed technology that uses artificial intelligence to evaluate feline pain or discomfort based on clinically validated veterinary pain scales. With the iOS app or API, called Tably, the pet owner takes a picture of their cat’s face and gets a rating of whether their
cat is having a good day or a bad day.
“Working for over 20 years in the pet industry, it was hard to watch how cats were suffering in pain, discomfort and untreated illness because they are so good at hiding pain,” said Susan Groeneveld, founder of Sylvester.ai. “Sylvester.ai was founded to help cats tell us if they may be in pain by assessing subtle facial cues.”
In addition to the app, Sylvester.ai wants to integrate its technology with other pet tech platforms. Integrating with Sylvester.ai will help platforms build customer engagement as pet parents seek to understand their cat’s health and lifestyle issues, company leaders say.
For example, integrating Tably with a pet telehealth platform allows users to immediately assess a cat’s pain or discomfort. If the cat is in serious pain and distress or has a series of bad days, the app can prompt the pet owner to chat with a veterinarian, which could result in a veterinary visit, said Rachel Krayenhoff van de Leur, Sylvester.ai’s operations lead.
Additionally, she said, Tably can track the state of the cat over its lifetime alerting the cat parent to potential issues and offer remote patient monitoring after medical procedures.
Sylvester.ai in January won a $25,000 Purina Pet Care Innovation Prize, one of five awarded from nearly 140 companies that applied. The prize has further propelled discussions with pet tech platforms whose leaders want to integrate Sylvester.ai’s technology with their own, van de Leur said.
Sylvester.ai so far has assessed 350,000 pictures of felines, Groeneveld said. The company aims for the technology to help cats around the world through integrations with pet tech platforms and strategic partners, further refining AI capabilities in the next five years. Officials want to expand the platform’s capabilities, including by adding new species and the ability to identify early disease states or symptoms for diseases like diabetes or urinary tract infections. “The first AI application is for facial recognition of whether a cat may be experiencing discomfort or pain, but the potential for visual recognition is really just getting started,” Groeneveld said.
Above all, Groeneveld said, the company wants to improve pet health and peace of mind for pet parents. “Our true success will be measured by the felt experience of animals,” she said.
This article originally appeared in The Fountain Report from Antelligence.com.
