Upskill on biosecurity with new digital tool
Do you want to be confident of being able to identify signs of an emergency animal disease in your sheep? Download to your smartphone or iPad a free new app from PIRSA and Animal Health Australia that helps educate you on what to look out for.
The new augmented reality app, that can be used simply on a smartphone or tablet, is an educational tool that projects a digital flock of 3D moving sheep onto the user’s real-life surroundings. It enables the user to walk amongst and inspect the digital sheep and learn how to identify emergency animal diseases such as foot and mouth disease.
Do you want to be confident of being able to identify signs of an emergency animal disease in your sheep? Download to your smartphone or iPad a free new app from PIRSA and Animal Health Australia that helps educate you on what to look out for.
Recognising symptoms of foot and mouth disease (FMD) early would make all the difference in reducing its impact if an outbreak was to happen in Australia.
Animal Health Australia has collaborated with the South Australian Department of Primary Industries and Regions (PIRSA) on the development of an easy-to-use digital tool that uses augmented reality (AR) technology to help educate producers visually on how to recognise signs of FMD or other emergency animal disease (EAD) in their sheep. The diseases included in the tool are FMD, bluetongue, scrapie, and sheep pox.
The new tool, known as the Sheep EAD AR app, projects onto the screen of the user’s smartphone or tablet a digital flock of sheep integrated with the user’s real-life surroundings. This provides an opportunity for the user to look for and identify the symptoms of a sick sheep, which is made easier by hints that pop up in real time on the screen.
The 3D nature of the image enables the user to walk up to, amongst and around the digital sheep (which move) – looking in their mouths, at their feet etc – to identify the sick sheep and its symptoms.
Launched at the end of August, the tool has been developed for educational purposes and cannot be used to diagnose disease.
If you have the slightest suspicion of an EAD in your livestock, call the Emergency Animal Disease Hotline on 1800 675 888 (open 24 hours a day).
More information:
- The tool is easily accessible and available FREE on both the Apple App Store and Google Play. It can be downloaded by first searching for Sheep EAD AR.
- Hear more about how the app works and its benefits, in Episode 229 of AWI’s The Yarn podcast at wool.com/podcast
This article appeared in the December 2022 edition of AWI’s Beyond the Bale magazine. Reproduction of the article is encouraged.
