Episode 23- AI in Veterinary Practice Enhancing Care or Overcomplicating?
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In this week’s episode
- Small Steps, Big Impact
Discover how starting with manageable tech changes can lead to major efficiency gains in your practice, all while keeping stress levels low. - Revolutionising Vet Education
Learn why embedding tech training into vet school curriculums is vital for preparing future professionals to thrive in a tech-enabled world. - Integrating Tech for Better Care
Explore how seamlessly connected systems can free up time, streamline workflows, and improve patient outcomes – technology at its best! - Balancing Trust and Expertise
Get insights on using AI and decision-support tools responsibly, enhancing your practice while keeping critical thinking sharp
In this engaging episode, Jack Peploe welcomes Dr. Mike Mossop and Yannick Bloem, co-founders of Co.Vet. Mike and Yannick dive into practical, forward-thinking solutions on how to make your practice journey as seamless as possible by adopting tech-driven solutions that enhance efficiency and care.
Additional Guest Spotlights
- Bruce Truman Best Recommendations: Discover how Bruce Truman transformed his business with FreshBooks and harnesses the power of ChatGPT to spark creativity and streamline work in this insightful episode!
- Joe Chickerillo: A sneak peak into the next episode of Modern Veterinary Practice podcast as they explore the game-changing role of technology, from automating tasks to enhancing client care, with insights from both veterinary and dental industries!
Show Notes
- Out every other week on your favourite podcast platform.
- Presented by Jack Peploe: Veterinary IT Expert, Certified Ethical Hacker, CEO of Veterinary IT Services and dog Dad to the adorable Puffin.
- We are joined by Yannick Bloem, one of Co.Vet’s co-founders and CEO, and Dr Mike Mossop, another of Co.Vet’s co-founders as well as Chief Veterinary Officer.
- Dr Mike Mossop is an OVC 2009 graduate with a rich clinical background and extensive experience across emergency and general practices. Before becoming Chief Veterinary Officer at CoVet, he founded Treatwell Pet Care, a technology-driven mobile practice in Ottawa. Committed to transforming veterinary medicine through technology, Mike focuses on easing the burdens of practice through innovative solutions.
- Yannick’s passion for building things began at a young age – learning to code at 13 and quickly progressing to creating websites. He studied computer science and later attended Carnegie Mellon University in the United States, where he further honed his skills. Yannick’s career took a pivotal turn when he joined Apple as an engineer, where he spent five years contributing to the development of software that reached billions of users. This experience of building seamless, intuitive software at scale profoundly shaped his approach to technology. After his time at Apple, Yannick sought to return to entrepreneurial pursuits and connected with his fellow co-founder, Mike, in Canada. With deep roots in the veterinary industry, Mike brought invaluable insight, and together, they embarked on their journey in the vet tech world.
- Recommended resources: Mark Manson’s “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k“, which Mossop recommends as it tackles big ideas on relating to finding and focusing on what’s really important to you in life. And also, “Traction” by Justin Mares and Gabriel Weinburg which he thoroughly enjoyed.
- Find out more about Co.Vet here: Co.Vet
Transcription
Coming up on modern veterinary practice
Yannick Bloem:
Yeah, I think people often think of new products. They need to apply new technology as these kind of massive mountains that are in front of them. It’s like I need to do this whole pile of things and completely change the way that I’m, if it’s in our case, the way I’m practicing or I need to change, they think about changing a PIMS, right? And everything that comes with that. But not all technology is the same in that way. And I think often we really try to boil it down to take small steps, take simple steps, but then take them. Now you need to get started. I think a lot of people try to push it back. They think they need to change everything. And with technology, the great thing is you can do very incremental changes. For us, obviously the big barrier is let’s try to make it as seamless and as simple to get started.
We don’t want any barriers to just be able to go. So you can go on the website, you can sign up, get started, and we say within five minutes you could walk into your next appointment with Co.Vet in your pocket. So it’s not some kind of two week process. There’s no trial pay trial or anything. It’s all free to get started. And so for us, it’s really start small, even if you’re not even comfortable doing it in a real appointment, start with your colleague, right? Start in the break room and do a mock exam and see how it looks.
Jack Peploe:
Welcome to the Modern Veterinary Practice Podcast. I’m your host and veterinary IT expert, Jack Peploe. In this episode, I’m thrilled to be joined by Dr. Mike Mossop and Yannick Bloem. Together we’ll explore the transformative role of artificial intelligence in veterinary medicine, focusing on how it’s reshaping workflows, enhancing care, and alleviating the pressure of practice. From Dr. Mike’s journey, as a practicing veterinarian embracing mobile and tech forward approaches to Y’s expertise in intuitive AI solutions, we’ll discuss the potential in challenge of integrating cutting edge technology into modern veterinary practices.
Mike Mossop:
So my name is Dr. Mike Mossop. I’m a practicing veterinarian. I’ve been out of school and practicing for about 15 years. Throughout those 15 years I’ve been through different parts of our industry. I’ve worked in emergency practice, general practice, and then leading up to today for the five years prior to this one, I ran my own technology forward, mobile practice. So going into people’s homes, doing house calls in their kitchen and their living room, which was a really interesting take on things. And while we were doing that, like I said, we took this technology forward approach where we developed an app to allow people to book online order food, order medication, complete telemedicine visits. And that really gave me a taste for the business aspect and the technology aspect of our industry. And the next step down that journey has been my work with Covid, which we’ll talk about today. It’s an AI copilot for veterinarians, but I’m just fascinated by the way that technology can make life a little easier for, that’s like myself in practice. It’s a fun job, it’s a very rewarding job, but it’s also a very challenging and it’s sometimes a frustrating job. So kind of trying to use technology to make that a little easier. And that’s what brings us to today.
Yannick Bloem:
My name is Yani Bloem. I’m one of the co-founders and CEO of Co.Vet. My journey is a bit different. My background is technical, so I am from originally back in Europe, Switzerland, Netherlands, and I now live in San Francisco and California. I studied computer science and started building things since I was very young. It’s always been just one of my big passions, the building websites – since I learned coding when I was 13 and kind of went on from there. I studied over at Carnegie Mellon at some point in the United States. And at that point I also got a job at Apple, which I spent five years working there as an engineer, which was obviously an amazing opportunity to get to build software at such scale and understanding how you build seamless, intuitive software that really works for billions of people. And after that, I wanted to get back into building my own thing. And I was very lucky to meet our other co-founder, Mike. There’s two Mikes on the co-founding team, Dr. Mike here, and another Mike. I met him when I was living in Canada. And he is been from this veterinary world his whole life, his mothers a vet, he started other businesses in the vet world. And so he kind of was the link there. And it’s been a great journey so far, building in this new vet tech world, extremely rewarding and happy to, really excited to chat about it today.
Jack Peploe:
Well guys, thanks so much for coming on the Veterinary Practice podcast. I’m glad that we didn’t bring the other mic on because that would’ve been a little bit too much having Doc Mike, Mike and Yannick. But guys, thank you so much for coming on. Obviously I’m really excited today I actually get to talk on my subject matter. Normally it’s about some other form of technology, but I’m hoping that we’re going to use the T word a little bit, not too much. We don’t want to sort of scare everyone off, but obviously I’m really eager to talk about how we can sort of revolutionise perhaps through technology. So I hope you guys are both up for that. Now, what I wanted to start with, if possible, is pick on you Dr. Mike initially, which is could you start by telling us about your journey from clinical practice to found treat well pet care, and what inspired your shift towards a technology driven mobile practice?
Mike Mossop:
Yeah, sure, absolutely. So I think probably most vets, the first, I dunno, five to 10 years in practice is really just learning the business, or not the business, but the medicine I should say. And like I said, going through emergency in general practice and by the time you’re five to 10 years out, I think you have a pretty good feel for most things. And most people have their confidence level going. I did end up in a corporate owned practice, became the medical director there, and honestly, I got a little burnt out and frustrated. It’s again, very fast paced, lots of fit in appointments, just never enough hours in the day. At the same time as the medical director, I felt there wasn’t a lot of room to progress beyond that. And looking at the next 20, 30 years of my career, I felt there had to be something else.
And so I did a little soul searching and decided to start my own business. The reason I chose a mobile practice, I just felt that there was a bit of the customer service aspect that was lacking in our industry. And don’t get me wrong, I know vets support staff management, they’re all trying really, really hard to ensure that our clients receive good service and our patients receive excellent care. But frankly, it’s difficult. And so the idea with the mobile business, which was called Treatwell Pet Care, I know Treatwell is something else in Europe, there’s like a, I don’t know, spa reservation company with that name, but it’s different in Canada. So anyway, the goal there was really just thinking how can we make this process as easy as humanly possible for the client on the other end? And the conclusions we came to were things like coming to their home as opposed to having them come to the clinic.
We did a lot of the billing on a membership basis, so just kind of recurring payments every month as opposed to paying per visit. The way those memberships worked in between the home visits, we would do telemedicine for free for our members. So if their dog had a red ear and it wasn’t too bad, but they like, is this worth a hundred dollars to schlep into the clinic and get it checked out? Instead of that, they could simply take a picture and send us an email or book a telemedicine visit through this software that we had booked. So it’s really just trying to reduce the friction and make it easier and the business didn’t end up working out for various reasons. There are some other companies, I’m not sure about the uk. I know in the states there’s a couple of businesses that have really taken the home care business and scaled it up, which is fantastic to see. But that’s kind of what led me to, I guess the in-home mobile practice. And then in building that business, I realized the importance of technology. It started trying to make things easier for the client on the other end, and I saw the power there. It kind of interested me. And I think again, where we’re going with Co.Vet is trying to same principles or apply the same principles rather, but for the veterinarian, basically to make your life easier in practice, to make your day a little more seamless. So yeah, that’s kind of the journey.
Jack Peploe:
Cool. So let’s move on to Co.Vet really, really cool solution. Something which I know that I’m sort of pushing to a number of clients, which is very exciting. What I think is the elephant in the room, because there’s a lot of terms banded around at the moment and sometimes not everyone is fully understanding of what they mean. And one of them is, do you mind just running into what does that mean for you guys? And
Mike Mossop:
Yeah, I’d say there’s probably two or three terms that get bandied about a lot. So one is like a copilot, another might be an AI assistant. You’ll also hear the word AI scribe used a lot and to be honest, to some extent they’re kind of interchangeable Out of those three, an AI scribe is the most specific. So it’s really dedicated to the function of scribing or note taking and medical record processing. Co.Vet does do that, but the reason we choose to use the term copilot is just that we do envision being a more encompassing assistant that basically follows you around in your pocket all day. And we want to do the scribing really well, but there are additional features beyond that that we are in the process of building up. So that’s kind of how I would use the term almost a digital assistant of sort that helps you with day-to-day tasks, automates things, makes things more efficient. So
Yannick Bloem:
Yeah, one way we love to say it is if you could imagine having an actual assistant sitting, standing next to you the whole day throughout your whole day in a practice and someone who had in a way unlimited knowledge and time and resources and all the things you could ask that person, what would those be? All those are the things we’re trying to build at Co.vet, and that’s really the assistant we’re trying to give you. And so I think the AI describe is how a lot of, there’s obviously other players in this industry and around the world, this is becoming a very popular space just because of how useful it is. And I think, yeah, a lot of people stop at describing part what they see as their really value proposition. We truly believe that in a way the end game here is much further than just being an axe crime.
Jack Peploe:
A hundred percent. No, it’s very exciting. And I mean obviously with exciting tech, people want to integrate it and that’s a really good area I wanted to cover with you guys. So I mean, Yannick, from your perspective, obviously integrating technology does come with quite a number of challenges, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be related to a Co.Vet experience, but what are some of the biggest hurdles that you faced with integrations and how have you overcome them and what could vets and veterinary professionals take away from that?
Yannick Bloem:
Yeah, I think people often think of new products, they need to apply new technology as these kind of massive mountains that are in front of them. It’s like I need to do this whole pile of things and completely change the way that I’m, if it’s in our case, the way I’m practicing or I need to change, they think about changing a PIMS and everything that comes with that. But not all technology is the same in that way. And I think often we really try to bullet down to take small steps, take simple steps and take them. Now you need to get started. I think a lot of people try to push it. They think they need to change everything. And with technology, the great thing is you can do very incremental changes. And so I’ll take the covid experience For us, obviously the big barrier is let’s try to make it as seamless and as simple to get started.
We don’t want any barriers to just be able to go. So you can go on the website, you can sign up, get started, and we say within five minutes you could walk into your next appointment with Co.Vet in your pocket. So it’s not some kind of two week process. There’s no trial pay trial or anything. It’s all free to get started. And so for us, it’s really start small, even if you’re not even comfortable doing it in a real appointment, start with your colleague, start in the break room and do a mock exam and see how it looks. And so I think whenever you feel something is too big or too complicated, make it a bit smaller and start with that step. And usually just starting on the journey then just lead you to going the full way because you actually get to experience the improvements and the quality that come with it.
So I think that’s usually my takeaway. And obviously having worked those years at Apple, I see what an impact building intuitive and simple UI and UX can have on the end user. And I think it’s not only the responsibility of the end user to BOB get the courage to go and try new technology and do it all, it’s also the responsibility of the people building software to do it in a way that’s simple for people to adopt. And so we’ve really tried to focus on that and I think for everybody building things out there, it’s always extremely important to keep that part in mind.
Jack Peploe:
Yeah, a hundred percent. And I mean Dr. Mike, so we’ve just spoken there about preparation for integration and creating intuitive interfaces. What about looking at the educational side? So how do you think the rapid integration of technology should influence the curriculum in veterinary schools? Should future vets be trained differently to prepare for this tech driven environment?
Mike Mossop:
Yeah, so I guess there’s two ways to handle that. I guess the short answer is yes, I think they should be prepared. This kind of technology is becoming more and more ubiquitous, not just in veterinary practice, but through all kinds of industries. So whether it’s physicians, lawyers, engineers, AI is being used. And as Yannick mentioned, we tried to make Covet as easy as possible to get started and it is very easy to get started, but there’s also a lot of kind of nuances. There is a skillset to being able to use the technology well. And I think that it is worth talking about that in practice. There’s also the need to look at the risk of using these systems. There’s a lot of controversy I think right now about AI systems that are being used to diagnose medical issues. There’s AI at play in different radiology circumstances and I’m sure other things that I’m not aware of right now, excuse me.
And I think that’s a little bit higher risk. And when you’re making a diagnosis for a patient, obviously you want to make sure it’s as accurate as possible. And what we’re doing with Co.Vet, automating records and other kind of decision support things, it’s a little lower risk, but even then you do want to make sure that you’re reviewing everything to make sure it’s complete and accurate. These systems are not perfect, but I think the thing to emphasise is it’s just that the time savings are so huge that even when you do take a few minutes to review and maybe make a couple edits, the net benefit is tremendous. So just having people wrap their brain around working as a veterinarian with this little assistant to basically leverage your skills and make your skills that much better. I think it does take maybe a little bit of a mind shift, but I think it’s one that is already happening for a lot of vets, and if we can give people a heads up in school, that’s a little easier.
And just the other tangent to touch on just with education, when we talk about Co.Vet being a more holistic copilot, even though we’re focused more on things like automation and record keeping. Now I mentioned the word decision support in there, and I think there’s a really big opportunity with a program like Co.Vet where it has the context of the consultation. So it knows that you’re talking about, you’re speaking to a client, their dog’s eating a bunch of chocolate or something like that, assuming it’s part of the discussion, Co.Vet would know how much the dog weighs, it knows how much chocolate it ate, it knows what the type of chocolate it was, and it could basically run those calculations for you and provide the answer without you having to go and log into some calculator somewhere. So from an educational perspective, being able to present the right information at the right time to veterinarians, I think there’s a big potential there that has yet to be realised. We’re kind of moving in that direction, but there’s a lot more work to be done. So I think that’s kind of another way where I think AI is going to push education forward and make us better vets and hopefully allow for better case outcomes too.
Jack Peploe:
Very nice. And Yannick, looking forward, what emerging technologies do you believe will have the most significant impact on veterinary practices in say the next decade? So not generalising from an AI perspective, can we delve in a little bit deeper?
Yannick Bloem:
I mean, I think in general AI, but not just at the level we’re seeing and now we’ve seen great improvements on obviously the LLM breakthroughs of being able to actually have these systems understand text and be able to reason about it. But I think in general, if you look forward what a practice could look like 10 years from now, you’re seeing these supports because in our case, you need to record the consultation. It’s a very simple example, but for the moment, people will take their phone to record or they’ll use a computer, but the audio won’t be great. We’re seeing already now new clinics building microphones into their practices because they want it to be part of the experience. And so looking forward, it’s going to be included in not only the consultation itself and being able to summarise it, it’s going to be included in all the various tools that things that Mike was mentioning around radiology, around documentation, frontline staff, the people at the front desk.
The vision really here is that it’s going to be able to help people not only with the audio aspect. You can very well imagine at some point something will be also visually recording what’s happening and be able to provide interesting help and feedback and insights into the visual aspect of things. And so I think there’s just really a great shift happening all over different types of jobs. We see it in the human health space. I know an example in the Netherlands where they have these built-in microphones in some very advanced hospitals and the doctor just does their rounds in the morning, but the microphone in the room already knows which patient is in that room. And so the doctor just comes in and talks about the case goes to the next room. At the end of the day, everything is summarised, everything is already prepared, but it’s all seamless.
And that’s I think the big shift that we can get to is that things become more and more seamless both for the patient and for the people practicing . And so I think we’re going to see shifts like that happening in veterinary medicine. And I think it’s something that we should embrace because ultimately it means people are able to actually focus more veterinarians able to focus on what they love doing, delivering care, and doing it at a higher quality, at a better pace, and achieving better work-life balance and better patient outcomes. So I really think it’s a great positive, it’s going to take time. There’s going to be challenges along the way, but we’re really trending towards that a very exciting kind of new direction.
Jack Peploe:
Yeah, no, it does sound very exciting. It’s definitely something that we’re eager to embrace as well. But I mean, you mentioned challenges there, and I suppose this is kind of post both of you, but what do you anticipate as the next big challenge for veterinary practices as they obviously continue to integrate more advanced technology? How should they prepare for this future?
Mike Mossop:
Yeah, I mean, that’s a tough one. I think one challenge, and you’ve maybe touched on this once or twice, but I know that veterinarians are kind of bombarded with stuff, whether it’s medical information and the latest and greatest from the conference or it’s new software technology coming out. For somebody who doesn’t necessarily have an in-depth understanding, it can be a little intimidating. And I think as Yannick said, it doesn’t have to be, you can start very small and move in very kind of stepwise manner to involve this technology more and more. And I think to your earlier question, in terms of starting to discuss some of this in the veterinary curriculum and have students more aware of it, I think that will help. But right now, that’s kind of what we’re working on, is supporting people through this transition and making sure that the process as easy as possible.
And generally I’m finding once people give it a shot, they realise after even just using it for half a day or a day, how much time it can save them. So to me, that’s the big challenge is just breaking through the noise and figuring out what really is of most real world value to the veterinarian. And ultimately it is a challenging job. I know a lot of us, you’re staying hours late after practice to write records and stuff like that, and it really just is, it’s a fantastic feeling not to have to do that, right? So once you get a small taste of it, it’s really kind of self-reinforcing. But I think that’s at least the big one that I see Yannick. Maybe there’s some other ones that you see as well.
Yannick Bloem:
No, I agree. I think that’s probably the big one. I think in general there is a challenge of, I think there’s going to start being more and more tools in the medical decision making world. And I think that’s going to be obviously a very, just a tricky line to figure out what tools can you trust? How do you need to actually use them, make sure that new veterinarians, new grads don’t over rely on these tools and they keep control of also their own knowledge and their own decision making. And I think a very natural transition is through medical decision support tools. But we’ll obviously get into things that get more advanced. And so I think that’s going to be an interesting one to properly figure out and I think make sure that it might be right in other cases, but you need to make sure if you’re actually going to start relying it for more, it needs to be right in the edge cases. And so I think there’s just going to be very interesting challenges there, but I think everybody shouldn’t think of AI necessarily, meaning medical decision replacement and coming to replace your job. It can have a lot of different forms and I think starting to be aware of what’s out there is obviously a great way to make sure that you understand bigger picture a bit better.
Jack Peploe:
Oh, cool. Well, guys, I dunno how this has happened. I think this is, when I talk about the subject, I really enjoy the time just seems to whip away. We’ve actually gone through I think over 20 minutes, which is amazing, but I am going to have to stop it here now, but I’d love to sort of pick this conversation back up again in the future. But obviously Dr. Mike, Yanick, thank you so much for obviously your valuable experiences and insights here. Obviously it’s really inspiring what you guys are doing with Covet and what you’ve got planned, even from the external conversations we’ve had. It sounds a really exciting journey and it’s a very, very cool tool. If people want to find out more about Covet or get in touch with you guys, how can they go about doing that?
Yannick Bloem:
Yeah, they can go to, our website is Co.Vet, so very, very easy. So you can go on there, you’ll find information, you can contact us there. Again, we said there’s a free 14 day trial for you, no credit card, nothing required. So you can just get started there and you can easily reach out through contact there if you’ve got any extra questions. But as we said, highly encourage people to give it a quick shot and we got great support to help you along the way. Cool. Well guys, thank you so much. Really,
Jack Peploe:
Really appreciate your time. Thank you.
Recommended resources.
Jack Peploe:
Every week we ask professionals and experts to suggest a best business resource for our listeners. This week’s recommendation is from Bruce Truman.
Bruce Truman:
I think a block and tackle one is for consultants or anybody that’s keeping track of client either hours or projects. A colleague of mine, Brenda SVA Medina, it was probably seven or eight years ago, said, wait, you’re not using FreshBooks for your client hours and billing, and I’m sure there’s other ones out there, but that changed my business, and maybe it was longer than seven years ago, but from Excel spreadsheets, logging hours on Excel spreadsheets to FreshBooks was a huge, and they continue to innovate too, right? So that was a huge one, and then it’s overly talked about, but chat GPT is just really, I mean, changed the way I think about things because it’ll get me started. If I’m stuck, I’ll just drop something into chat GPT, and it gives me the ideas I can grab onto and then build out from there. I think chat GPT has changed things incredibly in the space.
Jack Peploe:
Coming up next week, we welcome Joe Chickerillo to the Modern Veterinary Practice podcast. Joe brings his unique perspective from over a decade in SaaS companies, including human dental care to his recent focus on veterinary technology. In this episode, we’ll delve into the parallels between the veterinary and dental industries, explore the transformative role of automation in solving labour shortages, and discuss how technology can empower veterinary practices to focus on what truly matters. Caring for pets. Tune in to hear Joe’s insights on harnessing disruptive technology to improve efficiency and client experience.
Joe Chickerillo:
It’s such a game changer that once you have it, you can never go back to not having it. I always try and analogize it to like a GPS. Like, yes, you had MapQuest back in the nineties and that was revolutionary. You could download maps with a direct turn by turn thing to wherever you want to go, but you go from that to having a GPS that’s turn by turn directions. That updates a real time with traffic. I mean, who would ever go back to the former? You know what I mean?
Jack Peploe:
That’s it for this episode. All links and recommendations we talked about are in the show notes. Don’t forget to subscribe and share the podcast if you found it useful. In the meantime, thanks for listening and see you next time.