About

Turning a validated method
into a usable tool.

In Greek mythology, Chiron (Kairon) is the centaur who invented the art of healing — the ultimate marriage of horse and human, intuition and reason, ancestral wisdom and innovative thinking.

Kairon exists to bring Dr. Sue Dyson's decades of breakthrough equine research into everyday practice. By building a scalable, repeatable infrastructure for the Ridden Horse Pain Ethogram, we aim to bridge the gap between clinical science and real-world horsemanship — giving a clear voice to horses.

The RHpE — also known as the Ridden Horse Performance Checklist — was developed by Dr Sue Dyson and colleagues.

Team

The people behind Kairon.

Dr. Sue Dyson

Dr. Sue Dyson

Co-Founder & Chief Scientific Officer

  • World-renowned sports medicine and poor performance expert
  • Head of Clinical Orthopaedics, Centre for Equine Studies, Animal Health Trust, Newmarket (UK) — 37+ years
  • Former President of the British Equine Veterinary Association
  • Author of 460+ publications and 14,000+ citations
  • British Horse Society Level 5 coach
Héloïse Lebon

Héloïse Lebon

Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer

  • Horse breeder & rider
  • The World Bank — Global Wildlife Program
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Emma Farrugia

Emma Farrugia

Chief Technical Officer

  • Computer vision specialist
  • Horse rider
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AI Advisory Board

Robbert Struyven

Robbert Struyven

AI Health Researcher, Harvard University

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Alexander Meulemans

Alexander Meulemans

Senior AI Researcher, Google Zürich

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Josephine Daelemans

Josephine Daelemans

AI Health Engineer, UC Berkeley / Stanford

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CNRS

CNRS — GREYC lab, Image Unit

National Centre for Scientific Research, Normandy

Co-financed by the European Union

Supported through European structural and investment funds.

Ministère de l'Enseignement Supérieur

French ministry support for innovation and research.

Région Normandie

Regional support for technology and research in Normandy.

Partner with us

We welcome collaborations.

Academia

Building a data foundation for equine science.

Our database holds approximately 100 hours of ridden horse video and over 52,000 labels. We welcome collaborations with researchers working on equine welfare, behaviour, pain, biomechanics, or related fields. Reach out — we would love for the data we generate to advance equine science.

Contact us

Biotech & Pharmaceutical

Your treatment may be working better than current endpoints reveal.

The RHpE can provide a structured behavioural outcome measure alongside traditional clinical endpoints — a metric that speaks directly to riders and owners, and quantifies comfort changes that standard assessments miss.

Discuss a clinical study

Industry & Equipment

Evaluate the behavioural impact of saddle, bridle or bit changes.

Before-and-after RHpE scores give manufacturers and practitioners an objective measure of how equipment changes affect the horse's comfort under saddle.

Reach out

Invest in the mission

Help bring decades of equine pain research into everyday practice.

Support the scaling of Dr. Sue Dyson's scientific contribution through the development of Kairon. Every contribution helps make an objective, validated method available to more horses and riders.