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In this week’s episode:

• Overwhelmed Teams Don’t Have Time for Change – But That Can’t Be an Excuse: Many vets aren’t resistant to AI – they’re just too overloaded to consider new tools. Without clear, practical adoption strategies, even the best tech will be ignored.
• AI Won’t Replace Vets, But It Will Reshape Their Role – Are You Ready? From diagnostics to client communication, AI is already shifting how vets work. The question isn’t whether AI will be part of the future – it’s whether vets will take control of how they use it.
• The Right AI Tools Solve Problems – The Wrong Ones Create More Work: AI copilots, speech-to-text, and predictive diagnostics sound great, but not all solutions fit every practice. Vets must cut through the noise to find tools that truly reduce workload, not add to it.
• Technology Can Support Tough Conversations – If We Let It: AI can assist with everything from writing medical notes to helping structure difficult client discussions. Should practices embrace this as a way to reduce stress, or does some communication still need to stay human-led?

This week we are joined by Massimiliano Melis, CO of AITEM – a High-Tech Start-up focused on AI development which recently launched LAIKA, an AI tool designed for veterinarians to manage and analyse data.

Additional Guest Spotlights

• Jack Peploe: This week’s recommended resource comes from our CEO, Jack Peploe. Jack highlights They Ask, You Answer by Marcus Sheridan, a transformative book on marketing that encourages businesses to focus on answering real customer questions rather than pushing sales messages. He emphasises how this approach fosters trust, a crucial factor in the veterinary industry.
• Next episode sneak peak: Next episode, we welcome Dr. Phil Richmond, a leading advocate for mental health in veterinary workplaces. They’ll explore psychological safety, leadership’s impact on wellbeing, and strategies for creating a healthier, more sustainable work culture.

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.
• Massimiliano Melis is the COO of AITEM, a company specialized in AI development and owner of LAIKA, the 1st veterinarian copilot. He has a wide experience that ranges from corporate to startup environment. Started developing AI with his team since 2013. Now he’s leading AITEM, the first product of the company was AIPPO a pro-bono SW given to hospital to tackle COVID during the pandemic, capable to diagnose the virus in seconds from chest x-rays.
• Massimiliano is incredibly passionate about innovation and, as engineer, he believe that innovation comes only solving true customer pain points and not looking for the perfect (and useless) technical solution no one asked for.
• Massimiliano recommends ‘Never split the difference’, by Chris Voss and ‘The lean startup’ by Eric Riess.
• Find out about AITEM and LAIKA here!
  
  

Transcription

Jack Peploe:

Coming up on modern veterinary practice. Welcome to the Modern Veterinary Practice Podcast. I’m your host and veterinary IT expert, Jack Peploe. In this episode, I’m excited to welcome Massimiliano Melis, CEO and founder of AITEM. Massimiliano has been at the forefront of AI development transitioning from the world of autonomous driving to revolutionising veterinary diagnostics. Today we’ll be exploring the role of AI in veterinary medicine, how it’s shaping clinical workflows and the ethical considerations that come with integrating AI into decision-making.

Massimiliano Melis:

I think for sure it can streamline a lot of workflows and the key is decreasing the time spent on, let’s say, less value added task so that veterinarians can focus on caring about pet. So it’s about time reduction for tasks, deep analysis of images. One work that we did in the past in the human space was also to detect brain aneurysm with ears in advance. And what a machine can see sometimes in an image is more than what ary or a person can see. And definitely AI can disrupt this, let’s say industries field because it’s a tool to improve the performances of the people and the professional,

New Speaker:

The interview.

Massimiliano Melis:

So hi. Hi everybody. I am Massimiliano. I’m the CEO and founder of AITEM. That is the company that is actually launching today, LAIKA, that is the first ever AI copilot. Quickly about myself, I’m actually a mechanical engineer with an automotive background. I started developing AI since 2013, but I always said a patient that is related to animals and dogs in particular, and somehow this is how I actually landed to the development of AI for the veterinary field. We created item in 2020. As mentioned, I’m a mechanical engineer, but rapidly evolving in the, let’s say, AI IT space. And it’s definitely an impressive and extraordinary journey.

Jack Peploe:

I mean, max, that’s quite a shift going from automotive to ai, but that’s so cool. Obviously it’s great to have you on the Modern Veterinary Practice podcast today. Now I’m particularly excited. AI is a subject that I find fascinating, especially when it’s involving transforming vet care. I’m really with your work with AITEM and the innovations like LAIKA, the veterinary copilot that you mentioned earlier. Now obviously you’ve been involved in AI development for a number of years, and I would like to dive into your thoughts on where the industry is heading. But before we do, I kind of feel like I need to dive into a bit more about your background. So going from the automotive to ai, obviously you’ve worked on some truly groundbreaking projects with AITEM and LAIKA. Why did you want to break into AI in healthcare and veterinary medicine? What was the trigger?

Massimiliano Melis:

So somehow, as mentioned, it started in 2013. I used to work for General Motors on autonomous drive and on occupants monitoring. So basically we were dealing with AI to monitor what was happening within the vehicle to people in terms of health status. And with this, basically me and my team started developing skillset around the healthcare. The journey lasted several years. We developed quite a lot of technologies and in 2020 we decided somehow to create item. We then landed immediately to the health space because as we know, we were in the middle of the pandemic. Actually, the first job that we did with item was to develop APRO-bono project for hospitals here in Italy where we deployed a software in just two weeks that was capable to detect Covid in seconds by means of chest x-ray. It was a computer vision AI that we developed that was used to somehow help detecting the covid much more faster than the PCR.

And then we came with a batch, let’s say, of technologies that could be useful for healthcare and life science space. As mentioned before, I always loved animals. I used to have dogs. So I started thinking, I know how veterinary works, but how are they really working? And so I dig into the early routine. I visited several practices and understood which were the issues. The fact that somehow behind their smiling face, there is a lot of work to be done, overload burnout in several cases. And so I thought, okay, why don’t we use AI somehow to solve some issues and augment what they are doing and leveraging that tool that can really help. So this is some other, the journey maybe I was a little bit long, but really start from a vehicle and then to the people.

Jack Peploe:

Well, I mean it kind of makes sense and that’s really cool. But like I say, I’ve not come across many people that have done that. So kudos to you and very cool. Now, one of the big things with AI is it is rapidly changing many industries. I mean, you’ve talked about the automotive there. It’s definitely impacting those guys, but it’s impacting most industries. Now, from your perspective, what are the most significant ways AI is starting to impact the veterinary medicine side, especially in diagnostic tools like Laker?

Massimiliano Melis:

I think for sure it can streamline a lot of workflows. And the key is the decreasing the time spent on let’s say less value, added the task so that veterinarians can focus on caring about pet. So it’s about time reduction for tasks, deep analysis of images. One work that we did in the past in the human space was also to detect brain aneurysm with ears in advance. And what a machine can see sometimes in an image is more than what a person can see. And definitely AI can disrupt this, let’s say industries field because it’s a tool to improve the performances of the people and the professional. But at the end of the day, the final call must be on the professional because it’s a tool. The professional is the master tools

Jack Peploe:

With AI assisting vets in their decision making. We’ve kind of touched upon an aspect around the ethical considerations that come into play when using ai, especially in clinical settings. How can we ensure AI compliments rather than overrides human judgement ?

Massimiliano Melis:

So here really is how we basically teach professional to use ai. This is also why we started a parallel program that is called where we’re collaborating actually with universities like the University of the Sur one and other in the world, in order to have students practicing  with ai, but also adopting it with a skeptical way. People must know that AI is a technology, it can’t do everything. It may do mistakes. You should always look at the results of the ai, but then you have to interpret them. So it’s something that could really help. But when you propose AI to professionals, the key is not to tell them, okay, ai, you can forget everything. No, you must be focused on what you’re doing. AI is saving your time is augmenting. What you’re doing is improving maybe the accuracy, but really the final call is on you. So this is the key message that we always pass to the veterinarians we are speaking with.

Jack Peploe:

No, that’s cool. And I mean obviously a number of reasons why I think people resist to a point with the AI side of things is the fear aspect. Would you agree with that?

Massimiliano Melis:

Yes. There are a lot of, let’s say there are a lot of people that fears about that across every industry. We do see people that have the fear to be replaced by AI in the industrial sector, in the veterinary sector and so on. But really the point is AI is a tool. It is not perfect. It cannot hallucinate the key to somehow remove the bias of the fear. The bias around AI is to explain them how the AI work. So right now, it’s not really intelligence. It’s something that statistically evaluate what is coming next and is providing an answer. They’re an extreme powerful tool and they can remember basically much more better than us because they, they learned really on wide amount of documents. But somehow while I see that there is fear, the power tool to convince people about AI is that really that is a tool.

And if you start using the tool, you will see your efficiency in your daily work increasing really a lot. You will see that you can focus much more on what you like. Every time that we speak with the veterinarians using like we’re surprised because some of them are skeptical, but once they are within the platform, they are starting to use it more and more day by day. Because then the ultimate goal is that they can focus more on pets. They love pets, they’re there because they love them, and so they can focus more on that.

Jack Peploe:

No, a hundred percent. And I mean we’ve talked about one barrier there being education, so allowing the veterinary professionals to understand the core concepts of ai. So there is less of a fear there. And also understanding how to utilise it correctly because obviously there are some standards we need to follow. What other challenges does the veterinary industry face in adopting AI solutions at a broader scale? Are there any other specific barriers that you’ve encountered when introducing AI into clinical practice?

Massimiliano Melis:

Somehow engaging also with other professional that are selling software to the veterinary industry. What we saw is some reluctancy at the beginning in changing the tool that they’re using. I don’t think it’s because skepticism around the, it’s more because they’re really overloaded. So when you are so focused and overwhelmed by the task that you have to do, you really maybe don’t even think to look at something else and change the practice because it’s an investment. It’s like in a startup you need an investment before you are getting the revenues, and the same will be for veterinarians. So this is somehow the approach that we found out. I mean, it’s in the eye of everyone that more than 50% of veterinarians suffers burnout and why? Because they are overloaded. So somehow we are seeing this pattern in the field, but the key is how then you propose the technology and the adoption. So one message is it’s not here to replace, it’s here to improve. The other one is to show them that they can really solve a pain point, and once they see that you are solving an issue, they’re adopting it.

Jack Peploe:

No, a hundred percent. Now obviously looking forward a little bit, so looking into the future, how do you see AI evolving within veterinary practices in say the next five to 10 years? I know that’s a massive time in technology, but I’m just being intrigued. Do you foresee AI changing the role of vets in any fundamental way?

Massimiliano Melis:

I think yes and yes. 10 years I would say it’s pretty long considering that every two weeks open AI is releasing something disruptive. But no, for sure. I think that more and more there could be the possibility for veterinarians to really focus more on the pet and in the discussion with the pet parents. Ai I think will be introduced in several things from image analysis, any kind of data analysis, evaluation of clinical trials, scribes or tools like ours that are copilot that can provide you the soft notes, the differential diagnosis, even suggest about managing the clinic. It’s like for software engineers, they use a of tools like chat GPT or cloud. It really, it’ll become really pervasive. It’ll somehow improve several point of the work, and I think the veterinarian that we see today will be much more digitised in 10 years to come.

Jack Peploe:

Is there a particular piece of technology or AI that you think that that should really be focusing their attention on right now?

Massimiliano Melis:

I think what I’m seeing in the market is of course copilot. I mean the appetite, since the loss of change, GPT has increased the royal lot, and that can really become a great tool because several times, veterinarians, especially in the small practices, cannot interact with anyone. They have to call consultants, so they have to lose time. Instead with that, they are badly, somehow close to them for sure in the scribe part. And I think speech protects, text to speech technologies will play definitely a big role.

Jack Peploe:

No, that’s cool. And if a practice was to consider integrating ai, what is the most important piece of advice you’d give them? How should they begin to evaluate if AI is right for their practice?

Massimiliano Melis:

I think they should somehow start trying using it. Maybe in some particular cases, they may start using it where they’re seeing that they are losing time sometimes also in a pretty easy task. It can be differential diagnostic uses in difficult cases, but it can also be in, okay, how can I interact with the pet parents if I have to tell them that I have to practice with euthanasia? That is a major issue. Yesterday I saw using the newspaper here in Italy of some pet parents that basically screamed against a veterinarian because the dog was dying, he couldn’t do anything and he was receiving verbal accusation and stuff like this. So it can really be used. The word they are feeling, they are more stressed so that they are perceiving and getting the results immediately because if they are starting in general, yeah, maybe it’s a nice tool. It’s more like a toy than a tool. If they are starting adopting it on something particular where they’re suffering, where they have a pain point, they will appreciate it.

Jack Peploe:

No, absolutely. Well, Max, this has been such an insightful conversation. Thank you very much for Shedding some light on obviously the fascinating section of AI and veterinary care. Your passion for innovation truly shines through, and I’m sure our listeners have gained a huge amount of valuable perspectives from your experiences. Now, if people do want to get in touch with you, how can they go about doing so?

Massimiliano Melis:

Okay, so you can look for me on LinkedIn. So my LinkedIn page, AITEM analyst, and of course if you want to check like it’ll be on aitemsolution.com.

Jack Peploe:

Fantastic. And they’re all going to be in the show notes, but Max, thank you so much. Really appreciate your time.

Massimiliano Melis:

Great. Thanks a lot for the opportunity. It was a pleasure. Recommended resources

Jack Peploe:

For this episode, recommend resource. I wanted to highlight a book that completely changed the way I think about marketing. They Ask You answered by Marcus Sheridan. Now for those of you who’ve been following the podcast for a while, you’ll remember that I actually had the chance to interview Marcus back in episode seven, and it was a fantastic conversation. And before reading this book, I had little to no formal marketing experience, and honestly, I found the whole concept a bit overwhelming. But they ask you answer, breaks it all down in such a simple, actionable way. The core idea is that instead of pushing sales messages, businesses, whether you are a veterinary practice, a supplier or even a consultancy should focus on answering the real questions that customers are already asking. What I loved about it is that it’s not about gimmicks or complicated strategies, it’s about trust.

If a clients or customers are searching for answers online, why not be the one to provide them? The book really opened my eyes on how marketing isn’t about shouting the loudest, but about being the most helpful and transparent voice in your industry. So if you’re looking for a practical approach to marketing that actually works, especially in an industry like veterinary care where trust is everything, I can’t recommend this book enough. And if you haven’t already, go back and check out episode seven where Marcus and I dive deeper into these concepts. You walk away with plenty of insights you can start applying straight away.

Coming up next week, we welcome Dr. Phil Richmond, a practicing  veterinarian and a leading advocate for psychological health and safety and wellbeing in veterinary workplaces. In this episode, we dive into the realities of mental health in the veterinary profession, the impact of leadership on team wellbeing and the importance of fostering a psychologically safe culture. Phil shares his personal journey, insights from international wellbeing initiatives and practical strategies for creating healthier, more sustainable work environments. Tune in for an eye-opening discussion on the future of veterinary workplace culture and what we can do to support the people behind our profession.

Dr Phil Richmond:

The veterinary industry, we are at higher risk, and I want to say that there’s some confusion a little bit around the data. Certainly the suicide risk is one of the things that we hear most about and as happens with anything when we talk about suicides that is multifactorial. Some of that has to do with who we are, who we select to come into the profession.

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!