Cow mastitis: On-farm diagnostic tool, QuickMas, wins first place in $100k challenge

Three of the brains behind QuickMas: Michael Hoffman, Liz Cunningham and Vinod Suresh. Not pictured: Mark Oliver and Jagir Hussan. Photo / Sav Schulman

An agritech solution designed to benefit cows’ health took home first place and a supersized $25,000 cheque in this year’s University of Auckland Velocity $100k Challenge.

The annual challenge, run by the Business School’s Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Auckland, has helped start-ups find success on a global stage.

This year six new ventures secured a vital kick-start through the challenge, with University of Auckland researcher Liz Cunningham winning with her start-up — QuickMas.

Cunningham said QuickMas showed whether a cow had mastitis, helped identify the pathogen causing it, and determined whether the cow had responded to antibiotics.

The Liggins Institute research technician and her teammates - academic staff from the Auckland Bioengineering Institute, Faculty of Engineering and the Liggins Institute - said QuickMas was about helping the fight against antibiotic resistance in dairy cattle.

Mastitis is a costly disease where udder tissue becomes inflamed, often due to bacteria.

Cunningham had experience with the disease, having lost cows to mastitis.

She said QuickMas would also help farmers decide if their cow was safe to return to the herd or if she was still harbouring infectious bacteria.

“It will give dairy farmers answers about their cows’ mastitis in as little as 15 minutes and no more than an hour.”

Cunningham said the on-farm diagnostic tool was as simple as a Covid test, didn’t require Wi-Fi, and farmers could interpret the results themselves, so there was no need to send cows to the vet.

“It’s done using a milk sample, which is processed by our machine for five minutes before it’s added to our test cartridges.”

She said farmers would then be able to identify the source of infection.

“The current testing method on the market sees farmers having to wait at least 24 hours for a result.

“It also requires Wi-Fi, which a lot of milking sheds don’t have.”

Cunningham and her team are currently testing QuickMas prototypes.

She said they worked hard to develop something quick, reliable and fit for farms.

“We want QuickMas to add value to farmers’ businesses here and all over the world.

“Winning the Velocity challenge is amazing, and we’re excited to use the support provided to get this to market as quickly as we can to help dairy farmers and their cows.”

Cunningham says the QuickMas team will explore potential partnerships and seek external investment over the next six months, with the plan to have the product on the market in 2025.

She said using QuickMas would help the dairy industry fight against antibiotic resistance.

“Helping farmers understand the correct pathogen will enable them to treat their cows more efficiently. It will also inform treatment duration,” she said.

“Farmers will have the information to give each cow individualised and responsive treatment – undertreating or overtreating with antibiotics will be a thing of the past.”