New diagnostic platform transforms animal health

Have you ever thought that your own cell phone can be a tool when inspecting and diagnosing a farm? Innovation must be ongoing and that certainly applies to animal health.

Ruiz B 90x90 Headshot
Rolf-Dieter Günther from Boehringer Ingelheim spoke at the Poultry Innovation Days about the importance of diagnostics and new technologies. | Photo by Benjamin Ruiz
Rolf-Dieter Günther from Boehringer Ingelheim spoke at the Poultry Innovation Days about the importance of diagnostics and new technologies. | Photo by Benjamin Ruiz

Have you ever thought that your own cell phone can be a tool when inspecting and diagnosing a farm? Innovation must be ongoing and that certainly applies to animal health. In times when prevention is becoming more and more important, it is good to keep in mind what was said during the Poultry Innovation Days of Boehringer Ingelheim (BI), recently in Prague, Czech Republic.

Rolf-Dieter Günther, Boehringer Ingelheim, talked about the concept of diagnosing and monitoring, as well as a new diagnostics platform, initially designed as a prototype to identify and subtypify swine influenza, with future applications in poultry production.

Diagnostics market

Günther said that, in the first place, it is expected that by 2022 the diagnostics market will be a $3.6 billion industry, with a growth that is going to be twice what is currently seen in the animal health sector in general.

In the technology segment, the most important thing is immunology and molecular biology, that is, with enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests. Both types of tests account for half of the turnover in this segment, which will grow disproportionately quickly.

In the end user segment, there is the concept of “point of care,” which refers to what the animal needs and where the client needs it, which, together with technology, will have a lot of growth.

The importance of diagnostics and data

Traditionally, animal health companies have been better known for their products, "but increasingly we participate in services, such as lab services, to solve sanitary situations on farms," said Günther. Diagnosis and monitoring receive more attention now.

The concept of diagnosing and monitoring, analyzing and predicting is increasingly important, with the use of pertinent health data included in the prediction system with greater computational power. This whole concept is not new, but "what is new is the size." But that's what technology is for.

This can be set under the same roof of precision farming, that in itself, is evolving. In precision farming, smart sanitary solutions are connected, like vaccination systems that are developed more and more and that are linked to special products, and above all, to a documentation system: a system of systems.

The collection of all data, whether health, production and genetics, can be of great importance, what is known as “big data.”

New platforms

Today, the poultry industry requires new ways to make faster and more important decisions. It requires a holistic approach, of advanced systems that go beyond veterinary medicine, which include the monitoring of existing health data, the rapid and early diagnosis to be able to take appropriate and preventive actions.

The continuous observation of birds in their environment gives peace of mind to producers. Real time information, with an immediate notification of incidents, gives time to take the following steps and be prepared. A decision can be made faster than before, with tools tailored to the needs of the veterinarian and producer.

If we look at all this, BI has developed a platform that responds to the market needs. It is increasingly important to integrate diagnostics with monitoring in a concept that encompasses everything.

Mobinostics is the new technology to make decisions in diagnosis and animal health faster and easier in real time. With this tool you can know in advance significantly more if diseases are going to occur by collecting data on infectious diseases in birds for better prevention. This supports the idea of prevention through vaccination.

The new device

The Mobinostics device is portable, it works with batteries and is easy to operate, plus it contains a chip. A series of data of multiple parameters is entered next to a sample in a cartridge that is analyzed by PCR or ELISA.

For good quality in the diagnostics result, sample preparation is of the utmost importance. Regularly, lab equipment is not in the field, so what was developed is something that allows people to process the sample in a microfluidic cartridge. As it was mentioned above, it contains a biochip, the first of its kind, like the one in a credit card, where the biological material is placed. The cartridge has all the freeze-dried reagents that are needed for a particular analysis. Once analyzed, an electrical signal is sent to the smart cell phone that has a program that computes the data and presents the results. The system is designed to be completely digital.

During the Poultry Innovation Days of Boehringer Ingelheim, this innovation was presented for the first time in public, because so far only prototype tests have been done with some customers.

Page 1 of 1575
Next Page