Advanced Animal Diagnostics

About Advanced Animal Diagnostics

Advanced Animal Diagnostics (AAD) operates within the ag-tech and animal health sectors, providing on-farm diagnostic technologies for livestock. The company was established in 2001 by Rudy Rodriguez, who serves as the Founder and Chief Scientific Officer. Rodriguez brought over four decades of experience in medical device development to AAD, having previously held senior research and engineering positions at companies like Baxter Corporation and BD, where he was involved in commercializing groundbreaking products. His motivation for starting AAD was to apply his extensive experience from human medicine to advance animal health. Joy Parr Drach joined the company as President and CEO in 2009. Her background combines hands-on experience from her family's grain and purebred livestock operation with professional expertise in agribusiness consulting and new product launches. Parr Drach previously co-founded Entira, a management and marketing consulting firm for agribusiness companies, and has launched over 30 new products.

The company's business model is centered on the sale of its diagnostic equipment and the associated tests to livestock producers, specifically dairy and beef farmers. AAD's core offering is the QScout Farm Lab, a portable diagnostic analyzer. This platform supports specific tests like the QScout MLD (milk leukocyte differential) for dairy cows and the QScout BLD for beef cattle. The primary objective is to empower farmers with real-time, actionable data to improve herd health, increase production, and enable more precise use of antibiotics. By identifying infections early, the technology helps prevent financial losses associated with reduced milk production, lower milk quality, and decreased reproductive performance.

The flagship product, the QScout MLD test, is designed for the early detection of subclinical mastitis, an infection in dairy cows that often shows no visible symptoms but negatively impacts productivity. The test works by analyzing a milk sample to identify and differentiate white blood cells (leukocytes), which indicates the cow's immune response to an infection. The QScout Farm Lab analyzer processes the test slides—up to 20 at a time without supervision—and provides a simple, color-coded result (red for infected, green for not infected) for each udder quarter in minutes. This allows dairy producers to make immediate management decisions, such as implementing selective treatment protocols, which has been shown to reduce antibiotic use significantly. The collected data is transferred to a secure cloud-based account, QStats, for historical analysis and herd health management. This approach contrasts with traditional methods like somatic cell counting (SCC), offering a more precise diagnosis at the individual quarter level.