[소셜밸류=박완규 기자] Freshhour has unveiled ‘Barf Dog’, a customized food solution for companion animals, at CES, the largest global IT convention.
On the 14th, Freshhour announced that it had participated in the CES, which was held in Las Vegas from the 7th to the 10th, local time. Based on AI technology and big data, Freshhour operates ‘Barf Dog’, a healthcare dietary solution for companion animals.
Barf Dog is a subscription service that provides one-to-one customized companion animals food after analyzing health status and diagnosing diseases based on information such as breeds, weight, activity level, medical history, and allergies. Around one million algorithms are utilized for its companion animals healthcare dietary solution.
Last year, the service was commercialized, providing customized dietary solution for diagnosing diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease, obesity and skin disease with its ability to detect medical conditions.
A Freshhour official said, “The cost burden is significant, as the incident rates of these diseases are high and they also require consistent care, such as medication and treatments. Inflammatory bowel disease, obesity or skin diseases of companion animals are progressive conditions and have high possibility of spreading to other parts of the body. If left untreated or if symptoms become visible to naked eyes, these diseases may metastasize to other parts of the body and may require surgical treatment.”
Freshhour emphasized the importance of early detection of the disease as it could keep conditions from worsening. It also underlined the significance of consistent prevention and management of disease after treatment to avoid the re-emergence of the disease. “Barf Dog utilizes questionnaire to predict the disease beforehand. Even if companion animals have been already diagnosed with the disease, the service provides an accurate analysis on health status. Equipped with proprietary algorithms and Next-Generation Sequencing(NGS) data of microorganism, the AI diagnosis model diagnoses the health of companion animals, offering an analysis of whether they are infected with diseases or not.”
In order to accurately diagnose the diseases based solely on the questionnaire, both validity of the model and the quantity of data are essential for trustworthiness.
Therefore, Barf Dog ▲ standardized data from around one million companion animals, such as breeds, weight, ages, activity levels with respect to the disease, ▲ standardized cluster of intestinal microbiota Next-Generating Sequencing (NGS) related to the disease by collecting 500,000 stool samples ▲ reached 92% of accuracy in diagnoses solely through a questionnaire using Auto-encoder/SVM model, which contain an unparalleled amount of data.
The results of AI assessment and dietary solutions are presented on the dashboard.
The official said, “High-quality healthcare service and high diagnostic accuracy enable the service to offer one-to-one customized recipe recommendations and a subscription service that provides meals based on the companion animals data. The subscription service allows algorithm to calculate the optimized amount of calories (Kcal) based on big-data, and delivers one meal-kit package to subscribers in every two weeks.”
Launched in December 2022, Barf Dog analyzed around 120,000 companion animals. It acquired over 70,000 dietary solution subscriptions and has maintained a 86% subscription retention rates.
In addition, the service is carrying out an analysis of intestinal microbiota Next-Generating Sequencing (NGS) diagnoses from 5,000 companion animals built on the ‘Companion Animals Scientific Project’. It is on the verge of developing a therapeutic diet by improving diagnostic technology and developing pet food products through tracing the intestinal microbiota of companion animals in a short period.
These efforts led the service to earn 500 million KRW in sales in a year. In addition, the company formed partnerships with various large corporations to develop products and services that offer dietary solutions to highly engaged pet customers.
The customized dietary solution algorithm based on big data is supplying API to Thrive Pet Care, the franchise of the nationwide veterinary hospital in America, after signing a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). It also secured seed investment twice from various investors including the Yoonmin Foundation, Chungbuk Creative Economy Innovation Center, and N15partners between 2022 and 2024. It is preparing for a pre-series A investment in the first quarter of 2025.
An official said, “AI diagnostic technology and dietary solution algorithms based on microbiota Next-Generating Sequencing have already obtained US patents and completed the PCT processes in 2024. It secured its superiority and right of the proprietary technology of dietary solutions by publishing the paper in the Korean Society for Veterinary Nursing, an organization whose reputation is on par with the KCI.”
An official also added, “It aims to create a dataset to expand the scope of diagnoses beyond bowel disease, obesity, and skin disease, and to improve AI technology to build dietary solution system. The goal for 2025 is to have the service recognized as an ICT-based medical tool for animals by the Animal and Plant Quarantine Agency.
Lastly, an official said, “We plan to analyze global companion animal healthcare markets, including the U.S., by participating in CES in 2025. We will set out to develop strategies for entering global market. The CES gave us opportunities to form partnerships with various enterprises including local companion animal remote healthcare providers, pet insurance companies, and pet health products distributors. We will continue to work on our goal of entering the global market.”
Meanwhile, CES is the world’s leading convention that showcases the entire tech landscape at one event hosted by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). The convention takes place in Las Vegas every January.
[ⓒ 사회가치 공유 언론-소셜밸류. 무단전재-재배포 금지]
