Artificial intelligence (AI) technology is helping pet owners in South Korea detect the diseases of their furry friends, allowing them to seek treatment early and extend the life of the animals.
In one of the countries with the lowest birth rates in the world, the number of pet owners has exceeded 15 million, accounting for nearly 30 percent of its total population. As a result, the pet health industry in South Korea is seeing rapid growth.
Yoo Jae-eun once spent a small fortune on the treatment of her Bichon Frise's skin disease and vomiting symptoms. Now, a pet health management software helps her make preliminary judgments and handle the illness just at home.
The application can analyze possible diseases within one minute after recognizing the photos and videos of a pet's mouth, eyes, skin and gait uploaded by users through AI, then provide corresponding treatment suggestions.
"It enables me to identify problems as early as possible and give timely treatment. In terms of cost, it does help me save expenses," said Yoo.
By analyzing over 2 million images of pet symptoms and case data, the software can promptly detect minor changes in pet health conditions and identify disease risks with a diagnostic accuracy rate of up to 92 percent.
"For instance, glaucoma treatment is a race against time. With the help of relevant data, veterinarians can make differential diagnoses of various diseases in advance, which is very helpful for diagnosis and treatment," said Lee Ha-eun, a veterinarian.
Industry insiders pointed out that in recent years, South Korea's pet care industry has become increasingly specialized and segmented. According to data released by the Seoul-headquartered KB Kookmin Bank, the average medical expenses for pets for pet-keeping households in the Asian country is currently about 787,000 won per year, or about 561.7 U.S. dollars.
"My little dog was diagnosed with intervertebral disc disease and came to the hospital for systematic treatment. The effect is very obvious. Although it still has some ailments, I hope that it will be less sick in the future and stay with me for longer," said a Seoul resident.
Data released by the South Korean Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs indicate that the current pet-related market size in the country has reached 8 trillion won, (approximately 5.7 billion U.S. dollars), and is growing at an average annual rate of 9.5 percent.
However, industry insiders also signaled that problems such as the lack of standardization in pet medical charges still exist in South Korea, and relevant regulations and laws need to be further improved.
AI assists pet disease diagnosis in South Korea
Chinese stock markets dropped on Monday, as AI and tech stocks continued to see-saw, according to China Global Television Network (CGTN) market analyst Timothy Pope.
The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index closed down 0.59 percent at 3,882.01 points, with the Shenzhen Component Index, which has more exposure to the tech sector, closing 2.13 percent lower at 13,794.29 points.
Trading volumes on the two indices rose with around 2.01 trillion yuan (about 296.28 billion U.S. dollars) traded on Monday, up from 1.88 trillion yuan (about 280 billion U.S. dollars) last Friday.
Traditional sectors such as precious metals, coal mining, and insurance led the gains, while bio-tech stocks were among the top decliners.
The ChiNext Index, tracking China's Nasdaq-style board of growth enterprises, lost 3.21 percent to close at 3,431.89 points on Monday.
The STAR Composite Index, which tracks the performance of stocks on China's sci-tech innovation board, closed 3.10 percent lower on Monday at 1,896.16 points.
"The A-share markets seem locked in this cycle of rally and rout for those growth stocks, particularly in the AI and adjacent sectors. Today was very much on the rout side so, while the Shanghai Composite Index was down 0.6 percent, we saw the Shenzhen Component down more than 2 percent, the ChiNext board was down 3.2 percent and the STAR 50 down 3.1 percent. Those last three are more exposed to the tech rally than the Shanghai Composite. The big losers as I said were AI hardware companies - Shenzhen Gongjin Electronics was down 10 percent, Zhongji Innolight fell more than 7 percent. But they weren't alone because the other big winning sector of the last few weeks - biotech - was in retreat today as well. Investors were rotating into gold and coal stocks as well, and agricultural stocks extended the food security trade rally that we saw at the end of last week. There were a number of stocks across those sectors, all of those were hitting the upper limits of trade today," said Pope.
Pope said the rest of the week will be dominated by earnings reports from some of China’s biggest companies.
"The rest of the week is going to be mostly about earnings. The end-of-August filing deadline is fast approaching. Friday will be a really big day on the earnings calendar. We've got BYD, PetroChina, Shenhua Energy and a lot of big banks as well. Earnings that we are going to see for ICBC, China Merchants Bank and others will give us an insight into how much pressure the big banks are under with their margins. BYD is also going to be an interesting one in light of the government's anti-involution campaign and its efforts to avert a bit of a race to the bottom in the EV sector. And before we get there, there are Nvidia results in the US on Wednesday which will doubtless impact every stock in the AI space," he said.
Chinese stock markets start week lower on AI volatility: analyst
