Full disclosure: I am a part of a tele-health company called Healthy Pets, I will provide a link below for you to check out.

Begin rant:

There has been a slight delay in the uptake of technology in the Canadian veterinary scene.  With an acceleration in technologies such as AI, robotics, video calling it’s a bit strange that so many veterinary clinics have such poor websites.  Enter veterinary tele-health, a relatively new concept to veterinary medicine this has been a technology used in human medicine for quite some while.

It would seem there is a lot of tension in its uptake most notably from those in the veterinary community.  This confuses me because as an industry we constantly come under attack as being only in it for the money. Yet using tele-health to triage and advise clients whether or not they really need a visit into the clinic is a valuable tool to show the public that we really have the best interest of the pets in mind.  This is not the only avenue in which I can see tele-health helping.  It helps maximize patient flow, making sure the patients seen at the emergency clinic really must be seen.  It helps with continuity of care, if we as individual clinics can provide some degree of service after hours we don’t have our patients seeing other veterinarians.  It helps us reach those that have issues coming in, aka cats, mobility issues, remote and rural communities.

I can sympathize, it is never easy to dive into something new and unknown.  That being said if we wish to be a progressive and innovative industry we need to take a chance.  As a practitioner there is no better feeling than having a collaborative health plan with a client.  This partnership and trust is cornerstone to the health of the pet.  This is analogous to the public’s trust in the veterinary community.  If we tell them “no, you must come in for a full exam or we can’t help you” and they come in and we tell them it wasn’t an emergency and they go home with nothing, how have we built our partnership?  I’m not saying there won’t be hiccups or challenges but that isn’t a reason to stop moving forward.

If you want to learn more, drop me a message or check out healthy pets:

Healthy Pets