ON Monday, Kildare-based veterinary surgeon Jennifer Corley was given an award by Sheelagh Daly for completing the highly competitive Enterprise Ireland / KPMG Going for Growth course.
Corley is an equine surgeon who worked for over 15 years in a variety of leading universities, practices and on the Curragh. In 2010 her life took a significant turn as she faced series of devastating personal events.
“Both of my parents were diagnosed with terminal cancer. Our first daughter, Joy, was stillborn. Then a driver crossing the Curragh failed to stop and caused injuries to me that ended my hard won career as an equine surgeon.”
Faced with these challenges Corley decided to try and make the most of the situation she found herself in: “It was a very dark time but I was determined that something positive would come out of it. I decided to share the knowledge and experience I had learned working in top veterinary hospitals.”
And so Corley began her journey into the business world. In the months and years following her accident she established and developed Veterinary Advances – a company which make a number of apps for the veterinary and equine industries.“I wrote and co-wrote a series of Apps for veterinarians,” she explained.
One of the Veterinary Advances apps – Equine Drugs – now has over 6,000 subscribers worldwide and is given as standard to members of the British Veterinary Association and the Australian Veterinary Association.
Going for Growth
Over the last nine years Corley has expanded her business and in 2018 she joined the Enterprise Ireland / KMPG funded female entrepreneur program Going for Growth in 2018 to help launch her new app EquiTrace. She found out about Going for Growth from her local enterprise office in Kildare.
The course is run by Paula Fitzsimmons over six months, during this period the entrepreneurs learn all of the business basics, work closely with their team and mentor as well as setting targets for themselves.
Over the duration of the course all of the entrepreneurs can avail of tutorials from industry experts and leaders at KPMG on all things business related. Corley stressed how grateful she was for the added support from KPMG throughout the course.
Speaking about her experience of completing the course Corley said: “I’ve been so grateful to our local Kildare enterprise office for all their help and putting us in touch with Paula Fitzsimmons and her incredible team at Going for Growth.
“Through Paula I was introduced to my wonderful mentor Fidelma McGuirk of Payslip as well as my inspiring group of entrepreneurs on the course. As we are preparing to take on an investor, I particularly benefitted from the fantastic tutorials we received from top experts at KPMG.
“Going forward we are looking forward to continuing in the Going for Growth community and hopefully becoming Enterprise Ireland clients. Coming from the very male dominated equine surgical profession it was so empowering to be part of this dynamic group of successful female business women.”
New venture
This is only the beginning of Corley’s business venture. She is aiming to launch EquiTrace in mid-July this year. The app offers a number of different functions which Corley believes will help improve worker safety, reduce labour, reduce human error in recording medical information and much more.
During the Going For Growth course Corley formed a new strategic partnership with Allflex, who are now part of Merck. EquiTrace works in conjunction with their new Bio-Thermal microchip.
The unique combination of technology means that EquiTrace offers a means of recording, tracing and monitoring a range of data in relation to each individual horse, as well as recording the temperature of each individual animal.
The app works via BlueTooth with microchip scanners. This makes taking a horse’s temperature a much similar and safer process. It also makes significantly less labour intensive and more efficient to record and monitor data from a large number of horses. This is something Corley is optimistic about and feels it will make a massive different to larger farms and practices.
EquiTrace keeps the paperwork in the office but the information with the horse. During transportation or in the field by simply scanning an animals microchip it can be instantly identified by name. Every time it is scanned it’s exact GPS location is recorded.
Training or medical notes such as examination findings or medicine administration can be easily entered at the side of the horse.
Corley believes this well help eradicate errors in medical records especially as data entered on one device is instantly shared among all authorized personnel and entered into a central database for the farm.
When used with a Merck Bio-Thermo chip the app instantly reads body temperature which is then entered on a personal graph for the horse. This allows even subtle variations in an animals temperature to be picked up rapidly.
Aditional features
Another feature of EquiTrace is it has a GPS feature which logs every exact location that each horse is scanned. Corley detailed how she hopes these features will be very helpful in dealing with cases of equine influenza.
She also said: “Going forward I can see our app being extremely useful to produce verifiable movement records, which may be of pressing concern with Brexit.
“I also see this app being very useful to the charity sector. By requiring people who rehome animals to purchase their own microchip scanner, the charity will be able to access the horse’s temperature graph to check the animal is still alive, in the correct GPS location and regularly checked.”
Vaccination reminders are also likely to be added as a feature to EquiTrace. EquiTrace is currently being trialled on four major stud farms in Kentucky with very successful results and positive feedback.