Technology to allow veterinarians in Vietnam to expand their reach
BBC News profiles Quang Doan Hong, an accountant from Hưng Yên in Vietnam who also owns a farm with about 600 pigs. He’s had to learn quickly about pig health, and has also had to learn which sources of information are reliable. Mr Hong has joined farming groups and done online research, although he has realized that some information on Facebook, for instance, isn’t reliable. One thing that would be useful to Mr Hong is a hybrid source of information that combines the expertise of veterinarians with the convenience of digital access. These kinds of remote veterinary technologies are under development. The team behind Farm2Vet, a veterinary app for farmers, recently won the top prize from the Trinity Challenge, a charity tackling global health threats. The competition that Farm2Vet won focused on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) – the urgent global threat of our limited slate of antibiotic medicines becoming less effective as pathogens adapt. Professor Helen Nguyen and the rest of the Farm2Vet team are seeking to address these issues in Vietnam by working with farmers, veterinarians, and agricultural suppliers to develop a smartphone app that provides reliable information on animal care. There would be an AI-powered chatbot to answer relatively simple questions, and connections to veterinarians in more complex cases. “The technology that we are trying to produce doesn’t replace vets,” according to Prof Nguyen. The aim, she says, is to allow veterinarians to expand their reach.
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