Dunedin, New Zealand: With pressure on world health systems to access live and reliable disease information, are there lessons to learn from
animal disease management?
Can New Zealand’s proud history of farming innovation and recent development of world-leading on-farm technology,
provide insight and new tools for public health officials?
Techion founder and Manging Director Greg Mirams, who has led the development of a world-first online diagnostic
platform for the livestock industry, believes lessons from animal health can be applied to support human disease
management. While Techion does not work with viruses, its point of care (POC) platform FECPAKG2, is being trialled for
human health applications. The use of similar technology and techniques across human and animal health, known as ‘One
Health’ has the potential to revolutionise health delivery. From an epidemiological perspective, diseases behave in
similar ways in animals and humans, so it makes sense for the tools and approach to be similar.
Mirams explains; “as the world emerges from the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is growing recognition that
technology will play a critical role in the future approach to disease management. Health authorities need to act
quickly and be agile – that requires access to live, reliable point of care disease information that can quickly be
analysed and linked to experts and health agencies.” He notes that data alone is not the only answer for animal or human
health. “Diagnostic tools are only part of the equation, if the data is not aggregated, analysed and interpreted by
experts, it remains isolated data. The power of data is its ability to quickly empower experts and decision makers.”
The son of a farmer, who trained at Lincoln University, Mirams has over 20 years’ experience in developing disease
management technology. He is globally networked in the disease management field and is a co-author on the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation technical product profile for designing a platform for detecting human parasites.
“Sheep farming systems provide a unique and valuable insight into disease behaviours that can provide lessons and tools
for human health. When you break it down, a typical sheep farm is a monoculture (only sheep living together), they
include various ages groups, they are densely populated and genetically similar. As a result, at times, disease
management can be highly challenging. And if the farmer gets it wrong, animal welfare and commercial implications are
significant. Sheep health and performance is constantly impacted by changing weather, feed and management conditions
which can periodically create immunity stress on animals, making them highly susceptible to disease. As a result, sheep
farmers with their veterinarians and advisors, have become highly tuned and generally successful in managing a range of
sheep diseases.”
Mirams continued saying sheep farmers also understand the value and role of quarantine and isolation practices on farms
to prevent the importation and management of diseases such as; foot rot, salmonella and drench resistance - to name a
few. For the past 40 years, farmers have relied heavily on preventative drug treatment programmes to keep the commercial
impact of many diseases at bay. However, widespread drug resistance, combined with social and consumer pressures are now
driving farmers to innovate and implement new disease management practices.
Core to this innovation is access to live on farm data linked to technical support so farmers know if disease is
present, which animals are impacted, what may have caused the problem and what drugs will work to deal with it. Armed
with timely accurate data, farm managers gain a deeper understanding of disease behaviours within their operation and
how they can reduce the impact on their animals.
As an online technology, Techion’s unique digital platform aggregates and analyses disease related data by locality,
region or country. This enables the collation and geo-mapping of disease outbreaks and big data analysis of conditions
which trigger outbreaks. This provides the veterinary, scientific and other industry stakeholders with valuable data to
support timely alerts and information to help farmers stay in front of the disease curve.
So, how much of this approach and associated technologies could be transitioned and used as a ‘One Health’ technology to
assist in human disease management? This is currently being explored in developing countries with researchers deploying
Techion’s FECPAKG2 technology to explore this.
Take the example of NTD's (Neglected Tropical Diseases) which are prevalent in most developing countries around the
world. NTD’s negatively impact human health and they also compromise immunity, making populations more vulnerable to
other diseases and viruses. The challenge for health officials operating in developing countries are many. Current NTD
diagnostics are often basic, they are challenging to conduct in remote regions because they require technicians,
methodologies can be inconstant and data reporting is often sporadic and/or poorly collated.
Techion's platform is designed to be deployed, supported and serviced in the field. It operates remotely offline or
online, is connected to a cloud internet platform, uses artificial intelligence for image analysis and machine-learned
decision support. The platform provides health decision makers with a live database that can be geo-mapped and connected
to relevant experts, decision makers and stakeholders.
Work developing Techion’s platform for use in the human NTD area is underway through its collaboration with the Swiss
Tropical Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH) and other institutions with an initial focus on human parasitic helminths
(parasites).
Other work to validate the opportunity and broaden the platform’s application is underway in collaboration with Cornell
University in the United States and Ghent University in Belgium.
The Swiss Tropical Public Health Institute’s Associate Prof. Dr. Jennifer Keiser says simple, fast and accurate
diagnostic tools are critical to evaluate drug efficacy and potential resistance of soil-transmitted helminth
infections. Therefore her team is working with Techion’s platform to explore and validate its potential.
Prof. Dr. Jakob Zinsstag-Klopfenstein also from Swiss TPH, recently spent three months in New Zealand promoting and
supporting the One Health approach. During his time, he worked with Techion on the FECPAKG2 platform, specifically
aiding design and technical input on how the platform could be used across a range of disease testing applications. He
states: “In remote settings like those of mobile pastoralists in Chad (Central Africa) the combination of point of care
diagnostic (POC) systems with digital technologies and mobile communication have very large potential for animal and
human health.” With the Techion team, he has identified more than thirty different diseases that could be diagnosed
through systems like FECPAKG2, which would accelerate their control and provide access to care for people who are left
out by health systems.
Techion has worked closely with the support of Callaghan Innovation, New Zealand’s innovation agency, to develop its
animal diagnostic platform. Callaghan’s Agritech Group Manager, Simon Yarrow, commented, “New Zealand is a global leader
in Agritech with increasingly sophisticated technology. It’s exciting to see Techion’s technology being expanded to
address human health and disease management in developing countries.”
Greg concluded by saying, by drawing upon the similarities in animal and human disease management or ‘One Health’, we
can eliminate development replication and speed up the delivery of a new holistic approach to disease management to
benefit human and animal health professionals working on the front line.