The Mumbai-based Vetindia Infotech Solutions, in association with the Department of Medicine, Bombay Veterinary College, has developed a novel software for management of equines maintained for producing immune sera. The programme also maintains venom inventory, immunogen batch details and usage for vetting by drug control or CPCSEA authorities.

The software, named “Equisam”, is specifically targeting the biopharmaceutical industries engaged in maintaining equines to immunize and raise hyper immune serum for use in animal or human. According to the developers, the product conforms to all international food and drug guidelines for potency and safety and also all internationally accepted animal healthcare and welfare parameters of equine health and well being.

Equisam has been written in Visual Basic and Access, which makes it extremely user friendly and enables easy access to different folders.

The developers claim that the software has been provided sufficient security systems for preventing any alteration of the data once entered. “The programme is based on predictive model in that it predicts different operations and ensures the activity only when the set criteria of the activity are met. For example, if a horse is to be bled, it will only be allowed if the animal has been health checked and the health parameters are within the accepted range so defined. Otherwise such horses would be classified as “high risk” needing medical attention.

The software thus ensures “animal friendly” farm management. “The health and the production parameter threshold are editable so that the programme can be adjusted to varying standards in different states and countries,” they added.

The software can be used for horses/mules/ponies maintained for raising sera against different types of antigens in the same farm. It follows the natural logistics and the transfer of animal from one activity phase to the next is automatic. These are also criterion checks provided so that an animal fulfilling certain health and titer criteria can only be transferred to the next activity.

Equisam maintains the lifetime data of all the animals entering into operations. It maintains the data of even those animals that have died, culled or sold. This helps in veterinary auditing. The programme also maintains the data of all the cycles of immunization be it primary, secondary or booster. It also maintains record of all the bleedings, including the blood volume drawn and the plasma separated. An alarm signal is given as soon as an animal is overbled and the animal is blocked for next bleeding.

Based on the data of each animal, the software equisam generates daily action list, which can be the plan of activity for the farm staff.

According to experts from Bombay Veterinary College, equisam, by default, has a database with cut-off values for product potency and animal well-being. It analyses the day-to-day parameters of each horse and predicts high-risk animals and under-performing animals. This ensures that serum is drawn only from healthy animals. The software also generates a number of reports for any given period. These reports relate to administrative report, bleeding report, immunization report and individual animal reports.

The experts feel that equisam is the first step towards e-management of the equine farm and addressing the product potency and animal welfare issues.