Hospital for Small Animals

Monitoring health through GPS technologies

Using new technologies to assess patient health

GPS Collar Dog

We have a strong interest in using novel technologies to assess patient health more effectively. An example of this work includes the development and validation of techniques to assess the impact of pain relief medication on mobility and movement in dogs with osteoarthritis. We used bespoke GPS collars which fix the position of the wearer every second thereby allowing us to track position, acceleration and turning arcs in dogs running off the lead. We are working with other developers to further improve the technology to allow more information to be gathered over long periods of time. We anticipate that this technology will allow us to help dogs beyond the hospital, notably in Africa and India, where the role of dogs in spreading diseases is a particular concern.

Read the original research

Global positioning system derived performance measures are responsive indicators of physical activity, disease and the success of clinical treatments in domestic dogs.