Purina Street-Vet is the first of its kind: a digital billboard that turns a dog’s urine into data by testing for levels of glucose, protein, leukocytes, and pH, just by tapping into their normal behavior of peeing on the street. The technology uses quick data processing to take a health test from a laboratory to an interactive, digital billboard.

No specific regulations and restrictions were present for this project in France.

Dogs tend to hide symptoms of disease as a part of their survival tactics, so unless they do an annual check-up, owners don’t always know when their dog’s health is at risk. Purina Street-Vet provides a regular screening opportunity to catch signs of disease early, helping to keep dogs healthy.

Purina is passionate about pet health, which is why they made ProPlan Veterinary Diet, a pet food line designed to prevent disease by providing the right nutrition based on early detection. We needed to increase awareness of potential developing diseases in order to strengthen the relevance of the new product line amongst dog owners.

But every year in France, more than a million dogs don’t get their visit to the veterinarian, missing the opportunity for early detection, because their owners assume there is nothing wrong with their four-legged friend. As a part of their survival tactics, dogs don’t show signs of their disease, so by the time those signs become symptoms, it’s sometimes too late to provide treatment.

As an advocate for animal health, Purina wanted to come up with a way for the dogs to be tested early, by making it as easy as a walk in the park.

Introducing Purina Street-Vet, the first digital billboard which collects and analyses dogs urine, transforming their daily “business“ into a routine check-up by concentrating the process that usually exists in a laboratory into digital billboard. The dog simply pees on a pole, and the health check is performed. If a disease is detected, Purina Street-Vet suggests a specific product from the Purina ProPlan line, clinically designed to prevent the development of disease. Dog owners can also download the result and bring it to the vet.

According to studies, 59% of animals have a condition that could be improved with proper nutritional therapy. So with over a million dogs not getting their regular health tests, 600 000 dogs could be missing out on an opportunity for early diagnosis before it becomes serious. Yet a single drop of urine would suffice to check on dogs health, we just needed to come up with a way to collect it outside of a vet clinic.

59% of dog owners walk their dogs on a regular basis, so we thought this would be the best way to reach them, by fitting into their regular routine. Out-of-home ads felt like the most natural fit since they already existed in the that environment. In order to reach a high concentration of dogs we placed the collection sites in areas with high foot-traffic near dog parks.

Data is crucial to Purina Street-Vet, without real-time data collection and analysis, we couldn’t provide the right recommendations to dog owners. The billboard collects urine and performs an analysis using specific reagents identical to those in UriVet-100 (KITVIA), a common testing strip used by veterinarians and animal health professionals.

Once peed on, UriVet-100 changes colour, and Street-Vet identifies how the reagents react by observing the colour change using a micro-camera, Raspberry Pi3. The image data is analysed to detect for diabetes (glucose > 2mmol/L), kidney failure (protein level > 0.12-0.15 g/l), urinary infection (leukocytes > 10 - 15 WBC/mm3), or dietary imbalance (pH < 5.0 or > 9.0). Owners are informed if their dog shows signs of one of these diseases and can download the results on their phone and bring it to the vet. Thanks to the analysis of data, we were able to diagnose 1,024 health issues from 2,500 health checks.

Watch the tech-video in the annex for more information.

Street after street, Purina Street-Vet has reminded the millions of dog owners in France about the importance of regular health checks for their pets, performing over 2,500 health checks, which revealed 1,024 health issues: alimentary imbalance (596), followed by urinary infection (367), diabetes (42), and kidney failure (19).

More importantly, people were convinced they needed to visit the vet more regularly at a rate of 74%, and 94% changed their attitude about the importance of their dogs nutrition. 77% said Street-Vet improved the way they thought about Purina as a brand, and 83% increased their intent to purchase Purina products. (1)

Conversation and news coverage spread across France, as well as many countries including Turkey, Brazil, Japan, and the US, generating over 50 million impressions, and enthusiasm amongst professionals and pet lovers around the world.

(1) Source: SurveyMonkey Audience, quantitative study on 200 dog owners