Gillian Tabor: Enhancing routine physiotherapy with tech and data
Discover how Dr. Gillian Tabor integrates objective gait analysis into routine physiotherapy and collaborates with vets in caring for both competition and leisure horses.
Meet Swedish professor Ingvar “Fredric” Fredricson, a pioneer in equine locomotion research. In this film, he shares his long-held vision to improve horse welfare through better lameness diagnostics and prevention – and his joy that his ideas are finally being put into practice.
Ingvar Fredricson: "After some 50 years, it’s fantastic to see my ideas of using technology to improve horse welfare materialised"
Back in the early 1960’s, when Ingvar Fredricson began his studies to become a veterinarian, he decided to specialise in equine biomechanics, a relatively unknown field of research at the time.
He realised early on that the human eye is too slow to detect the finer aspects of equine locomotion, and raising money to film trotting horses with a high-speed camera was a significant milestone.
“I knew from the beginning that it would take a lot of technology to improve equine lameness diagnostics and prevention,” he says.
Reflecting on the past 50 years, he notes that technological progress has caught up, enabling the realisation of his initial concepts. The Locomotion Laboratory established by Ingvar Fredricson in Uppsala, Sweden, has become a hub for developing tools to help human visual perception through machine learning and artificial intelligence.
“I’m really happy that today a lot of young and enthusiastic people have taken over my basic ideas. And this is just the start of a lot of work for horse welfare. We must care for our horses – and for that, we need better knowledge”, he says.
Some of those young and enthusiastic people are found very close to home.
A family dedicated to horse health and performance
Fredricson’s passion for improving horse welfare through a better understanding of the horse’s motion is shared with other members of the family. His sons Peder Fredricson and Jens Fredricson are both top-ranking showjumpers and his daughter-in-law Isabelle Fredricson is a veterinarian and researcher at the Swedish national equestrian center Flyinge.
Isabelle is now focusing full-time on research but before that she managed the health of approximately 100 horses at Flyinge and has been a pioneering user of Sleip to monitor the horses under her care. She was recently awarded a research grant for a PhD study on prevention through movement monitoring of horses.
Four-time Olympian Peder Fredricson has made a name for himself as an equestrian who puts the welfare of his horses first. He is now implementing gait monitoring as routine for the horses at Grevlunda estate. Stayed tuned for an interview with Peder.
