Like the vast majority of Nepalese, Melisha Ghimere came from a remote village from a family of subsistence farmers who raised cows, goats, and water buffalos. Seven years ago, she watched her relatively wealthy uncle and aunt lose a lot of their herd to an outbreak of anthrax; they were never to recover their economic footing. Melisha went on to college thinking about the plight of her family. In college, she worked to develop a predictive early warning solution to help farmers. With a team of four students, they researched livestock farming, veterinary practices, and spoke to farmers. They built a prototype for a monitoring device that tracks temperature, sleep patterns, stress levels, motion, and the activity of farm animals. Melisha’s AI system predicts the likely health of each animal based on often subtle changes in these observations. Farmers are able to track their animals, receive alerts and actionable recommendations. Although her project is still in its infancy, the field tests have shown the solution was about 95% accurate in predicting risks to an animal’s health. Melisha and her team were able to help a family prevent a deadly outbreak of an anthrax infection by identifying a diseased cow, before symptoms were evident to the farmer. Melisha’s team was a regional finalist in Microsoft’s Imagine Cup competition in 2016.* For more to inspire you to embrace AI, read this developer’s ebook. Then contact us to find out how we can help make AI work for you!
* The Future Computed–Artificial Intelligence and its role in society–Microsoft
