Bio

Davide Rossi is a Co-Founder and CEO of FitBark, a data-driven technology company on a mission to get pets and their owners healthy and safe together. FitBark designs wearables that help humans in 140+ countries to get actionable insights into their pet’s location, activity, quality of sleep, calorie balance, anxiety, skin conditions and overall health and behavior. FitBark is also a research-grade platform adopted by 100+ vet schools and research institutions to validate the effectiveness of new drugs, foods, procedures and medical treatments. In a previous life, Davide designed Ferrari engines, co-founded BRM Model Cars, and managed Oil & Gas projects in Asia and the Middle East. More recently, he served as an investment banker with Deutsche Bank in New York, where he advised FinTech clients on capital raises and M&A matters. Davide holds a M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Università degli Studi di Padova (Italy) and a Master in Business Administration from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Pet Wearables: Motivating Human Health Through Our Commitment to Companion Animals

Pet ownership has been generally associated with improved human health outcomes. Pet wearables have the potential to take this dynamic one step further, by providing actionable insights that improve the quality of caregiving and drive additional physical and mental health benefits for humans and their pets.

From the outset, FitBark's technology ecosystem has been designed around a "Healthy Together" vision. Native integrations with Fitbit, Apple, and Google's human health platforms aim to transform people's commitment to the health of their pets into a fun visual journey of accountability that reinforces the human-animal bond.

In this session, I will be discussing how pet wearables can provide owners with actionable insights into pet health and behavior. Certain insights focused on helping a pet achieve their health goals have a prominent side benefit: they generate a new form of social support that increases the motivation of their owners to exercise more.

While increased activity is generally associated with a reduction in obesity, cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, and other medical conditions, the benefits of pet wearables also extend to human mental health. In addition to highlighting a pet's anxious behavior, wearables can reduce human stress and anxiety by quantifying evidence of good caregiving, and by providing real-time location tracking when pets unexpectedly go missing.