This smart gadget is helping farmers analyze pig sperm. Yours could be next

If you’re reading this, you’re probably not a pig farmer. But if you are indeed a pig farmer, you’ll be pleased to learn that startups are creating cool new gadgets just for you. A startup in Taiwan has created an add-on gizmo for the iPad Mini that allows farmers to analyze boar sperm. Yes, boar sperm.

Microscopic

For farmers, pigs are the richest part of the livestock industry, explain Jolanda Hsu and Mavis Hong from Aidmics, a startup that grew out of a project at National Taiwan University (NTU).

The startup’s gadget, iSperm, is a smart piece of hardware consisting of a microfluidic chip (that’s the testing part) and a high-resolution microscope (the analysis part) that ties to an app. It looks more like some kind of fancy camera lens, and comes with the case that the microscope holds onto.

The idea is that it provides everything a breeder or farmer needs to check boar sperm quality and make decisions about breeding that will benefit the business.

The whole iSperm piece of hardware costs just under US$2,000, though that can vary in each country where it’s sold. That seems to be cheaper than most such specialist testing devices on the market, which are bulky, industrial-looking gizmos that give read-outs on LCD screens – and it serves as a microscope too, so it does the job of two pricey bits of kit.

Fertility testing for humans

The iSperm hardware grew out of a NTU project by the four co-founders that was originally designed to analyze human sperm and do fertility tests. It takes a long time for such a medical device to get FDA certification for use on human patients, so the Taipei-based team decided to bide time by diverting the business into agriculture. While that goes on, the gadget is undergoing clinical trials on humans at hospitals in Taiwan, says Hsu, who’s the startup’s business development manager.

The “dip and cap” testing nib offers up results in just in 17 seconds, which then display in the accompanying free app. That app also allows farmers to take short videos of up to seven seconds of the boar sperm as it moves, which means they can use it to get further analysis from a professional. Or perhaps post it to Vine.

The team plans to get back into human sperm analysis and fertility testing as soon as it has approval, though it’s not yet clear what form that will take. Home testing kits for men are already on the market in several countries for as little as US$25 – however, those only test sperm concentration and do not answer the agonizing question of whether a man is fertile or not, according to the Mayo Clinic.

That means there’s still space for smart hardware like Aidmics’ to go after ordinary people, but it’s questionable if consumers will be willing to pay for smart hardware to answer a once-in-a-lifetime question when they’ll be expecting something cheaper and disposable, like some kind of pregnancy testing kit.