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AN EYE ON LIVESTOCK
FERTILITY APP
DOMINATION
The sad truth of business, is that it takes
money to make money.
Fortunately for
Verility Inc.
, an ag-tech business
started in 2018 and headquartered in Maxwell, Indiana,
money is being found to help it commercialize its new
livestock fertility analysis program—
Fertile-Eyez
.
Verility is already well-known for its development and
marketing of a technology that assesses livestock
semen and ovulation samples, called Fertile-Eyez,
which recently closed a US$3.5 million Series A round
of funding, that was led by
Mountain Group Partners
of Nashville, Tennessee—an investor dedicated
to guiding transformational businesses in the life
sciences, animal health, and technology sectors—and
a previous investment from
Purdue Foundry
, an
entrepreneurship and commercialization hub whose
professionals help Purdue innovators create start-ups.
Fertile-Eyez is a mobile smartphone livestock sperm
analysis and ovulation detection app. Using image
recognition and AI (artificial intelligence) technology, it
provides a highly accurate visual of animal fertility and
is correlated with current gold standards.
Rather than testing first being done on animals on
behalf of humans, the Fertile-Eyez concept was
licensed from the intellectual property of Brigham
and Women’s Hospital, a non-profit teaching affiliate
of Harvard Medical School, where it was created and
validated in humans.
Verility is lead by co-founder and Chief Executive
Officer
Liane Hart
and co-founder and Technical
Advisor
Hadi Shafiee
Ph.D., who invented the
technology as the Head of the Shafiee Lab and faculty
member at the Engineering and Renal Division of
Medicine and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
It was at the hospital, where Fertile-Eyez was created
and validated in humans and is now the first true AI
fertility device in the animal health industry.
The technology was created by Shafiee to improve
user experience—it allows sample testing to be done at
home, rather than having to travel to a clinic.
No one is suggesting people are akin to swine, but the
technology was recently confirmed accurate in boars
at Purdue University and has recently been accepted
for publication in the
Translational Animal Science
Journal
.
Improving ovulation detection and improving sperm
analysis are two critical ways to increase production
and the quality of the meat produced.
According to Hart, the animal conception rate
is a known fact of correlation between producer
profitability and food sustainability.
“The Series A funding will allow us to develop our
product for swine producers and breeders in a major
segment of production,” stated Hart, who has earned
a Bachelor of Science degree in animal science and a
Master of Science in breeding and genetics, both from
Purdue University.
PHOTO:
Роман Мельник
– stock.adobe.com