The arrival of tools entirely dedicated to the follow-up and monitoring of the health and performance of athletic horses has enabled trainers to be more comfortable in their decision making and to carry out continuous monitoring of their horses thanks to the data collected. The veterinarian is also an essential element in the athletic horse’s environment and his role is preponderant. Find out now how the veterinarian can offer new services to their clients using health and performance monitoring with EQUIMETRE VET.
Sports monitoring service: the veterinarian involved in the performance
Assessment of fitness and stress levels
In order to follow the progress over time of all the horses in the same stable and to know their level, using the EQUIMETRE sensor to provide an overall effort test is a real advantage. In fact, the exercise test makes it possible to measure the level of fitness of the horses in training, to evaluate the performance of the training sessions and to detect any cardiac pathologies. The exercise test carried out in a stable also provides reference data on the horses that have taken this test in order to assess their fitness level and monitor their progress.
Always with the idea of monitoring and analyzing, it is interesting to measure heart rate variability to know the horse’s fitness status. Veterinarian Emmanuelle Van Erck describes the VFC as “a reflection of the state of pressure and stress on the body of the athletic horse”.
Performance improvement programs
The data collected from the monitoring of the horse’s health will also be used to individualise the training programs for the horses in the stable. These data constitute an interesting tool to build homogeneous groups in terms of fitness level, specialities and training preferences. The work is then focused on the identified strengths and weaknesses of the horses in each string.
Prevention and detection of the first warning signs of locomotor and cardio pathologies
An abnormal recovery? A locomotion defect? The data can reveal early warning signs of pathology that the veterinarian can investigate quickly. Referring to a remote ECG, asking for photos or videos or the trainer’s feelings about a particular session are first steps to pinpoint a possible problem before it becomes more serious. More generally, performance monitoring allows very early detection of underperformance and its underlying veterinary causes.
Veterinary monitoring service using telemedicine
Remote diagnostic and analysis of pathologies and prioritization of consultations
Telemedicine and remote monitoring of horses allow you to prioritize the requests of the owners and trainers of the horses you are monitoring. Benefiting from essential information related to the health of each of the horses allows you to carry out a first consultation from afar in order to judge the urgency of a trip to the stable concerned.
If one of the stables monitored by the veterinarian has a tool such as Equimetre, the data collected during training are available at any time on the platform. So if the trainer thinks his horse is out of shape, the veterinarian can extract his ECG, heart rate and speed during exercise and analyse them to detect possible heart pathologies. In this way the problem can be managed before it becomes too dangerous for the horse.
ECG diagnosis
The EQUIMETRE sensor collects the ECGs of the horses being monitored. Allowing veterinarians to work with reliable, scientifically validated and medically accurate ECGs, at full speed, is a real advantage in order to carry out the most complete analysis of your clients’ ECGs. The ECG is automatically recorded at each training session. Thanks to the mirror account functionality, the veterinarian can also work remotely and analyse the ECGs of his clients from his practice.
The great advantage is that you can let trainers and riders train normally, even without a vet being present, and get their ECG to be analyzed remotely.
Remote monitoring of horses undergoing treatment or rehabilitation
Being able to objectify the physical condition of the horse and having him monitored remotely by the veterinarian is one of the advantages offered by telemedicine. The tools dedicated to telemedicine allow the monitoring of a horse diagnosed with a cardiac pathology or in rehabilitation phase thanks to the analysis of remote data.
Today, if I have a sensor that I can put on an injured or sick horse in training during the 6 months of his rehabilitation, I can objectively evaluate if his physical condition is evolving well or if, on the contrary, a different treatment or training needs to be put in place. This allows us to be really more precise and reactive in our interventions.
Keywords: equine veterinarians, sports medicine monitoring of racehorses, exercise ECG, fitness data, cardio, locomotion and speed, veterinary telemedicine