The Equine Industry: How New Technologies Are Modernizing the Care of Competition Horses

The French startup Arioneo, founded in 2014, has set out to bring big data and the Internet of Things (IoT) to the equine industry. The young company, certified by the Hippolia competitiveness cluster, has raised 1.1 million euros to develop its products for the equine industry. Its onboard device, Equimetre*, equipped with connected sensors, provides a detailed analysis of racehorses’ horse welfare and performance metrics. It then provides a simplified interpretation of the collected data for the trainer. This new sports medical monitoring device for equines is expected to be available on the market as early as next year.   With Equimetre, optimizing each horse’s athletic performance hinges on monitoring its health. Using sensors connected to a big data platform, this wearable device measures and analyzes the athletic horse’s physical and physiological activity in real time. Body temperature, heart and respiratory rates, propulsion, acceleration, top speed, recovery time, and exercise endurance are all data points collected by the app—whether during a race or training—thanks to sensors attached to the girth. The goal is to track performance, perform early detection of mobility issues (such as lameness), and reduce the risk of serious injuries—particularly those caused by overtraining (such as stress fractures)—thereby helping to minimize the need for veterinary intervention. The innovation lies in generating a comprehensive report using an algorithm that compares the collected data with information on external conditions, humidity levels, and terrain type. Trainers and owners then have access to a personalized, data-driven tool for assessing their horses’ health and performance, enabling them to better tailor and schedule training sessions (intervals, long-distance runs, endurance, speed, etc.) and even identify future champions. Rather than simply presenting the data as graphs or tables, the app places all the information within its specific context (weather, ground conditions, etc.) and interprets it for each individual horse on a day-to-day basis. Without replacing the trainer, Equimetre aims to enable them to apply performance monitoring methods to equines by providing complementary, cross-referenced statistics that are currently unavailable to them. In particular, trainers can compare the physical condition of the horses they train with past performance data and identify the horses’ aptitudes on different terrains, at various distances, and under different outdoor temperatures. In the short term, Arioneo’s first round of funding will accelerate the development and commercialization of another innovative product for the equine industry. Since last December, the startup has been working with the Fouganza brand (Decathlon) on a blanket equipped with a new sensor capable of analyzing a horse’s comfort by cross-referencing its physiological parameters with contextual data such as outdoor temperature or humidity levels. This information can then be easily accessed by the rider via an app with an intuitive interface. The goal is to launch a new version of this sensor as early as September 2016, which is expected to analyze more parameters and be integrated into all types of blankets. These two innovations should enable Arioneo to specialize, over the next five years, in the collection and analysis of equine physiological and athletic data. The two young co-founders, who are alumni of Le Tremplin, an incubator dedicated to professional sports, are aiming for rapid expansion—starting this winter—in Europe and internationally. * http://www.equimetre.fr/