Revolutionising healthcare for racehorses

There’s no horsing around when it comes to the racing business, as the Centaurial Healthtech team found out while researching health technology to assist racehorse training.

“Horses are precious assets for their owners and trainers, being a source of pride and excitement and symbols of wealth. Caring for them is an intensive process that becomes a way of life,” says team leader Ela Gursel, a seasoned figure in the content industry.

Offered by SMU, the Master of Science in Innovation (MI) programme aims to groom the region’s entrepreneurs and innovators, and it provides students with exposure to experts in the field and a global perspective, including an international residency. The programme culminates in a capstone project, where the students get the chance to put their new skills to the test and innovate in order to bring value to whichever sector they choose.

The Smart Equine Training System (SETS) is the Centaurial Healthtech team’s capstone project. The business concept includes an app for real-time monitoring, as well as a comprehensive database of health and performance statistics for racehorses. This allows trainers to track these metrics for a racehorse before or during a race or training session. An algorithm can also highlight areas that trainers can look into, to make adjustments to the horse’s routine, training or care.

The other three team members are Diana Sutanto, an expert on technological trends; Martin Gwee, a veteran in marketing and business development; and Herbin Chia, who has 20 years of corporate planning and strategy under his belt. These core members are assisted by Matt Lin and Anthony Chew, both engineers with a passion for using their skills to make waves in the medical field.

Through research and interviews, the team realised the racing industry lacked user-friendly technology that could capture and analyse data that would help trainers monitor the health of racehorses, and tailor an optimal care and training regime for them.

With the guidance of Professor Frank Siegfried, who specialises in innovation and technological projects, the Centaurial Healthtech team took over a year to create the platform as their Capstone Project in the MI programme.

“We found the design thinking approach to innovation and proposition development invaluable. This approach helped us identify the primary customer that SETS was solving a problem for — the racehorse trainer. And the field work that we undertook to draw up the empathy map of the racehorse trainer helped us identify features and functionalities that are important, and validated our initial hypothesis,” says Ela.

Looking forward, Centaurial Healthtech will continue to draw inspiration from human healthcare, particularly those geared towards athletes, and finetune SETS accordingly. The team is also looking to collaborate with more racehorse trainers to further the SETS design.

The team members believe that this innovation could benefit generations of racehorses and their trainers. Says Herbin: “We want to equip racehorse trainers with the tools to extend the income-generating years of the horses in their care. Our vision is to help trainers who use SETS to become sought-after partners for racehorse owners whose main goal is to increase the value of their living assets.”