As far as pet health goes, one thing remains certain: preventative care is just as important for pets as it is for humans.
Despite this, the pet industry has seen fewer pets being taken to the vet as often as needed for the last five years.
Either it’s because of costs, inconvenience, or the lack of pet health knowledge at home, this situation has resulted in worse health outcomes and higher healthcare costs for pets.
The good news is, keeping pet health problems at bay is possible. However, pet owners need the right tools to understand and monitor their pets’ health and help their pets live longer and healthier lives.
Enter Mella.
Carrying the tagline “pets’ new best friend”, Mella is the world’s first pet thermometer that accurately takes your dog’s or cat’s temperature under their armpit. It creates smart vital signs monitoring technology that allows anyone, anywhere, to get the insights they need to help their four-legged best friends live healthier, happier lives.
According to Daniella Morgan-Pascualvaca,
“We just launched our first two products. So, we have two thermometers. We call them the ‘Mela Pro’ and the ‘Mela Home’… What’s interesting about it is (that) it’s not your regular drugstore thermometer. It’s actually the world’s first axillary, cloud-based pet thermometer for pet parents.”
How Mella Pet Care Started
The idea for Mella started when Anya Babbitt noticed her rescue dog, Mella, developing a bad case of kennel cough.
According to Anya, Mella’s symptoms were subtle at the time, so she wasn’t sure if the situation was serious enough to warrant a visit to the vet. Uncertain of what to do, Anya used her observations and judgment to make the call. However, this almost led to Mella’s death.
Daniella shared,
“Anya didn’t really know how to connect the symptoms. She didn’t know the diagnosis… Mella almost didn’t make it. And Anya realized, ‘Oh, my God. What really could have helped me was a thermometer. It could have really helped to rule out all of these potential symptoms if I only knew her temperature.’”
This near-traumatic experience inspired Anya, who now serves as Mella Pet Care’s CEO, to gather the team members who are helping her run the business.
Together with the team and her co-founders, Yale Zhang and Ben Seidman, they set Mella Pet Care on a new adventure, one where they positioned the company as an ecosystem of technology products that empower both veterinarians and pet parents to better understand and track their pets’ health.
“It’s really just innovation built around the love and passion for your animals… Mella Pet Care builds accessible technology and diagnostic products for vets and parents to easily track health, starting with the thermometer and expanding to body fat, pulse ox, and other key vital signs.”
Mella Pet Care’s founders have worked together since 2014. Mella’s R&D team has also developed and commercialized a total of six products in human healthcare.
Mella Pet Care for Tracking Pet Health
Currently, there are few options to gain visibility into pet wellness inside a pet guardian’s home. Mella aims to address this by enabling pet parents to understand how to best care for their pets using data insights that address preventable health conditions. The company’s ecosystem of products also combines to give a fuller picture of your dogs’ or cats’ health.
With Mella, you simply put the thermometer under your pet’s armpit. This way, no one gets hurt or feels uncomfortable, unlike when you use a regular drug thermometer.
Not only that, but all the pet’s data goes straight to the patient management system. This makes everything integrated for your vet.
“We are making pet healthcare accessible and approachable to pet parents. Parents say they want to have happier lives with their pets without having to do as much work… Just as we have staple products for our human children, we are also adapting them for our pets. The future of pet care involves bringing machine learning to the millions of pet health records gathered through tools we have built to help us all make better decisions for improved health outcomes,”
Daniella said, closing the podcast.
Learn more about Mella Pet Care:
Check out their website at https://www.mella.ai/.
