Iowa State alumni are working to create a wearable harness that measures temperature, respiration and pulse rate remotely. 

VetMeasure is a platform for animal wearable technology to serve as a tool for veterinarians to care for and monitor their client’s animal, according to the website. The company was founded by Kevin Maher, an Iowa State alumnus, in September 2015.

According to the website, the company was created to help ease the lives of veterinary professionals and increase the transparency between the vet to client to patient relationship. 

“VetMeasure the concept with our wearable device was that there’s a disconnect between veterinary practices and their clients, and more so between the veterinarian and staff and patients in a hospital,” Maher said in a podcast.  “So our focus has been gauging technology the veteran with technology in the practice setting in a more affordable way with our wearable device, which is a harness.” 

The company is located in the Iowa State Research Park. 

The company recently created a harness that measures dog’s temperature, respiration and pulse rate remotely. The harness also measures environmental temperature and humidity to identify any unusual activities to provide an early warning for animals falling into a health risk status.  

“So the harnesses actually offer remote monitoring abilities […] you can check your phone from anywhere and you can still read the patient’s vitals,” said Sydney See, sales and customer success specialist at VetMeasure and Iowa State alumna. “Since telemedicine and telehealth in the event space is becoming such a large thing right now and is just booming, we are actually available to enhance the telemedicine industry with our technology.” 

The harness will also be able to monitor changes in surgical recovery, declining or at-risk health conditions and heat stress, according to the website, which is used to help the veterinarian and animal owners’ knowledge and animal health care response.

“We currently have harnesses at Boone Veterinary Hospital and then we’ve been in contact with some of the Ames clinics [and] working on maybe doing some trial periods with some of them,” See said. “We also have interest from Iowa State, some of their doctors. There is some barriers going through the university to get new technology and so we’ve done a little bit with the procurement process, but haven’t officially applied for becoming a vendor through Iowa State so we have to do that first.” 

The harness is focused on dogs at the moment, but See said they are looking to expand the product for other animals