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Have you ever been worried that your pets were acting strange but you could not tell why? That feeling inspired Eugene Siu Cheuk-wing and her brother Oscar Siu Chak-lam to start Petalife in 2023.
The Hong Kong start-up helps people track the health of their cats and dogs. Using the app, pet owners can create a digital log of their animals’ well-being by uploading photos of their stool, urine or vomit.
In 2015, the siblings were shocked to find out that their dog, Oreo, had cancer. They only found out about the illness when it had already become deadly.
But Eugene said symptoms in cancer’s early stages could be as small as suddenly not eating much or being less active.
“For these very small things ... if the owner is not really around for 24 hours or is not very experienced, they will not notice,” said Eugene, 30, Petalife’s chief executive officer.
Inspired by the sudden loss they faced, the siblings considered how other people might want a tool to alert them about their pets’ health issues.
How the app works
Petalife’s app has about 10,000 users. When Petalife notices something unusual in users’ uploads, it alerts them and suggests seeing a vet if there are risks.
The company said its app had an overall accuracy rate of about 93 per cent. But it stressed that Petalife is meant to support, not replace, professional vet care.
To analyse stool, the app uses artificial intelligence (AI) to create a health assessment based on the Bristol Stool Scale. This is a medical guide that groups faeces by shape and texture.
Based on the records uploaded by users, an AI chatbot gives suggestions.
“The AI chatbot may ask some questions – for example, about what [the pet] has eaten in the past 24 hours – to make the owner recall if there was anything special,” Eugene said.
She shared how a user panicked over what looked like blood in his dog’s stool. But the app noted that the colour was orange, not red. The chatbot then asked the owner what he had fed his pet and traced the colour to a carrot mixed with the dog’s steak.
The technology behind the app
The siblings began developing their idea in 2022 through start-up competitions, where they met vets and got advice from experts.
They worked with vets and other partners in Hong Kong, Britain and the Greater Bay Area to collect about 100,000 sets of raw data to train Petalife’s AI model. They used datasets that covered cats and dogs of different breeds, ages and sizes.
Vets made sure the AI model’s ability to analyse photos matched standards at an animal clinic. Experts continue to independently check the AI’s accuracy.
Eugene is in charge of the business side of the company, while Oscar, 27, works on the app’s technology. He is Petalife’s chief technology officer.
In university, he found his passion through a start-up competition. He designed a machine that mixed water with pet food to create a paste. He won funding to build a prototype and learn about how things are manufactured.
At Petalife, Oscar built the app’s AI model himself, and he continues learning new skills to improve it.
Both siblings agree that real-world experience is key to finding your passion.
“Studying and actually working are two different things,” Oscar said. “The newest technology cannot be learned in university ... [You should] look at more things outside school.”
