Over the past few years, digitalization has arrived with a bang, changing almost every area of our lives. And the rate of change is only going to accelerate. From the way we work and communicate to how we organize our lives – digital tools and technologies are everywhere. Vets have long recognized the need to depart “analog island” and embrace digital solutions. Digitalization is crucial when it comes to boosting efficiency and quality in animal healthcare. It also helps vets focus on the needs of patients and pet owners.
Waiting Is Not an Option
The future starts now. Vets who are already going digital and gathering valuable experience with digital technologies will clearly gain a competitive edge over those who remain stuck in the past. They will benefit from lower costs, increased customer and employee satisfaction, and greater loyalty to the practice, which will ultimately boost the value of their business.
Digital Technologies in Veterinary Medicine
Already, digital tech is widespread in veterinary medicine. One example is cloud computing, whereby users take advantage of resources such as servers, storage, databases, network components, and software available via the web (or cloud). With cloud computing, you only pay for the services you use, which saves money on hardware and software. Computing speed and storage capacity can be precisely tailored to the needs of the practice or clinic, and later increased as the business grows. Contracts with the providers guarantee reliability and disaster recovery.
Today, many transactions between veterinary practices and service providers are already handled via such platforms: transferring lab and image data, forwarding invoicing data to settlement agents or insurance companies, sending orders to suppliers for meds and equipment, and more.
Disease Prevention through Digitalization
The point of “big data” is that it lets you manage and process the daily flood of data your practice generates about animals, examination results, treatments, and prescriptions. This data is then analyzed so you can pinpoint the right diagnosis and course of therapy. One fascinating current development is a project in Lower Saxony involving the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover (TiHo), the Public Health Agency of Lower Saxony (NLGA), and the Lower Saxony State Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety (LAVES). The project participants are investigating ways to detect and prevent outbreaks of infectious diseases by combining and analyzing data from human and veterinary medicine.
Portable sensors, or wearables, are taking off in veterinary medicine. According to US market research and consulting company Grand View Research, animal owners in the USA spent an estimated 2.3 billion dollars on monitoring the health of their pets via wearables in 2023. Wearables can provide vets with valuable data and insights regarding the patient’s medical history, which would otherwise not be available in meaningful volumes, if at all. These sensors can also support therapy by logging vital parameters such as sleep and physical activity.
3D-Printed Implants and Prostheses
Various researchers are also looking into the use of machine learning based on artificial neural networks.It’s a given that this technology will increasingly be applied in veterinary medicine in the future. It will support vets with diagnoses and free them up from mundane, repetitive tasks.
App-Based Customer Interactions
What’s more, the inventory management data from your in-house software can help you predict the demand for medications and consumables in your practice. This makes it easy to order the required supplies electronically, saving both time and money. Your suppliers can then transmit the available quantities, prices, batch numbers, and shelf lives via an invoice or delivery note directly to your inventory management system.
How Going Digital Pays Off
First and foremost, digital technologies allow more efficient workflows. In the future, the use of AI-based software to analyze CT or MRI images will enormously reduce the time needed for diagnoses – time that can be profitably spent on other tasks. If your customers can book appointments online, they won’t constantly tie up your staff on the phone. Your assistants will be free to devote themselves to the patients already in the practice. Digital technologies also hugely boost customer loyalty. Apps focusing on customer communication make staying in contact with your practice super easy. A practice that uses digital tech is more competitive because it saves time, effort, and money. It lets you keep your existing customers happy, attract new ones, and also raise your profile as a great employer.
More than a third of companies surveyed by the Handelsblatt newspaper reported that the benefits of digitalization had quickly offset the costs.
Where do I start?
Have you decided to streamline your practice routines and customer communication with digital technologies? Then your next question is how to adopt them. Every practice or clinic has its own specializations and goals and comes with different preconditions. So there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to implementing a digitalization strategy. A guideline published on the website of the Federal Association for IT, Telecommunication and New Media (Bitkom) provides a few useful tips to get you started.