Episode 43 – Futureproofing Practice Technology, AI & Avoiding Digital Regret

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In this week’s episode:

• Automate the everyday.
  The biggest workflow wins come from simple automations – reminders, stock ordering, and payment integration – that remove daily admin drudgery and free up time for patient care.
• Build on scalable, connected systems.
  Future-proofing isn’t about chasing shiny tools – it’s about choosing cloud-based, integrated systems that talk to each other and grow with your practice.
• Design workflows for people, not processes.
  “Less clicks, more care” should be the guiding principle – good tech reduces friction and empowers every team member, from long-timers to locums.
• Adopt AI where it truly adds value.
  Practical AI – like scribe tools and patient-history summaries – can streamline consultations today and set the stage for smarter, more connected workflows tomorrow.

In this episode, Jack Peploe is joined by Carly Clark, Product Leader at Covetrus, to discuss how smart automation, cloud technology, and practical AI – combined with a people-first approach – are transforming veterinary workflows and helping practices future-proof their operations.

Additional Guest Spotlights

• Recommend Resource: This week we hear from Alyssa Mages, who praises A Call to Life by Sonya Olson – a powerful, evidence-based guide to building resilience and wellbeing within the veterinary profession.
  
• Next Episode Sneak Peak: Coming up next, we are joined by Dr. Libby Kemkaren-Thompson, veterinary surgeon turned behavioural neuroscientist and executive coach – to explore how understanding your brain can transform leadership, combat burnout, and unlock personal and team potential through her powerful Big Cat Brain model.
  
  

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.
• Jack sits down with Covetrus product leader Carly Clark to unpack how smart tech adoption – automation, AI, cloud, and integrations – can reduce admin drag, cut errors, and give teams more time for patient care. We cover:
• Why “boring” automation (reminders, ordering, payments) beats shiny toys for ROI
• Building on scalable, secure cloud foundations – and what that unlocks
• Picking integrations that actually talk to each other (and your PMS)
• AI that’s useful today: scribe tools and rapid history summarisation
• Designing workflows that save clicks for locums and long-timers alike
• Closing the education gap: in-app comms loops vs inbox fatigue
• What surprised Carly in the last 5 years – and what’s coming next
• Carly is deeply passionate about: Driving innovation that makes practice management more streamlined and efficient Listening to customers to gain insights that help continuously improve Ascend Enhancing the customer experience to ultimately benefit their clients Championing working parents, drawing from her own experience as a mother to her daughter
• Discover how Covetrus can help you!

Transcription

Jack Peploe:

Coming up on Modern Veterinary Practice Podcast

Carly Clark:

Automation, it has a less shiny frame to it. It’s not seen as something especially when compared with AI as bringing that core benefit to practices. But I am a true believer that the right automation does significantly help streamline business processes. It takes that drudgery out of your daily tasks within workflows, anything from really stripping it back to automated comms, automated reminders going out, whether it’s for appointments, whether it’s for products or services that are prescriptions that are due to be refilled that the patient and the client need to come and consume that has a lot of benefit. That’s a huge manual task for users within a practice.

Jack Peploe:

Welcome to the Modern Veterinary Practice Podcast. I’m your host and veterinary IT expert, Jack Peploe. In this episode, I’ll be welcoming Carly Clark, Product Leader at Covetrus to the podcast, we’ll be talking about how to future-proof veterinary practices through smart technology adoption from automation and AI to cloud-based systems and integration, and how a people first approach to innovation can transform the way teams work and deliver patient care,

Carly Clark:

Thanks Jack. Well, thank you for having me here today as well. I appreciate it. I’m excited to be part of your podcast. My name’s Carly Clark. I’ve grown my career to become a product leader at Covetrus. Initially gaining a degree in psychology and working in software recruitment for many years to then jumping to the other side of the fence and joining a software company directly where I work, delivering veterinary software for the last seven years at Covetrus from on-premise practice management systems through Robo Vet and RxWorks to launching our cloud practice management system. Ascend, really seeing that evolution of technology and the needs in the veterinary industry over the last seven years. It’s something I’m really passionate about, product management and the impact that strong and clear product management and strategy can have on delivering and better supporting the needs of this fantastically passionate industry that we have at our hands.

Jack Peploe:

Yeah, it absolutely is. And Kylie, it’s so good to have you on the Modern Practice Podcast. Now you’ve been in the thick of practice management system innovation for years now, as you said, but what really comes across is that you are not just building tech, you are trying to solve real human problems, which is awesome, and that’s kind of where I want to focus today. There’s a lot of noise around automation and AI in our sector at the moment, but you’ve brought forward a really important framing of how do we actually futureproof revenue new practices, not obviously just through tools, but by thinking directly about how we plan to and use technology. So if you’re up for that, that’s what I want to focus on. Now. Where I wanted to start was there’s no shortage of tech in veterinary medicine, but in your view, what separates practices that thrive with tech from those that they feel they’re buried by it?

Carly Clark:

Oh, very, very interesting question and to almost take a step back before I specifically answer your question there, for me, it’s really key to understanding what we’re talking about when we’re talking about future proofing and that helps answer your question. So it’s not about, in my perspective, chasing every new shiny gadget that’s available in the industry. It’s about building something that is scalable, secure and has that integrated foundation for long-term success and that scalable infrastructure can be really looking at investing in seamless cloud infrastructure through to the hardware that you’re utilising and you’re building your veterinary practice on so that you’re avoiding constraints of upgrading later in five, 10 years’ time down the line. And then looking at system integration. So choosing a practice management system, diagnostic software, online booking client comms, AI scribe tools for example. The list goes on and on that can communicate with each other, reducing that duplication in errors.

And that’s something where I see there’s varying degrees of success with practices in the industry today. So there’s solutions available that have all of this capability built in and some practices will be absolutely perfectly capable with their practice manage system as a standalone system, and that’s all they need to be able to deliver that wonderful patient care. Where we can see layers on top of that and varying degrees of success in the veterinary industry is where we look at really how these tools integrate with other providers in the market. Whether it’s something to help avoid that manual workflow like the hot topic of today, AI scribe to things that help support and level up your online booking capability or your client communications. These are areas that we see varying degrees in success. And one thing that is of particular interest to me that I’ve seen really evolve over the last five years as well is with the evolution in technology, we’re seeing newer degrees of data access being available with your practice management system.

So with Ascend for example, the multiple ways in which a practice can integrate and hook in and build additional capabilities bespoke to their own practice to really set themselves apart from the industry to help stand out and offer that more unique experience to their clients and their patients is where we see a lot of success. Now, that might not be something that a practice thinks about or has the capability of doing today. Some do and we see a range with our practices that use our software and some don’t. But it’s thinking about, okay, well maybe I don’t have the capabilities today, but in three to five years’ time, individuals will have passion projects they want to explore, technology is becoming more accessible. So is that something that if I invest in this software today that I will be able to do in years to come?

And that’s an area where when we talk about practices that maybe aren’t getting the best out of their system today where we look back, pause integration, online payment integration for example, is a key tool that has been available is integrated solution for practices for many years now. And the adoption surprisingly is not where you would expect it to be at. And that’s something that really introduces with a manual write back a lot of potential human errors and a lot of additional manual effort for users in practice. So really seeing practices understand where the challenges maybe are and where there’s opportunity for them to invest in technology to gain that automation workflow and reduce those error so that they are spending more time doing what they do best and providing that excellent patient care. So there’s a real opportunity there to not just think about the future but also to kind of almost take stock. What are the challenges that you’re experiencing today in practice and where when we reflect on maybe what’s been available for the last couple of years, are there opportunities to start implementing some of this automation and leverage these integrations that are available?

Jack Peploe:

Absolutely, and I think, I mean that’s a really interesting one and it’s something which I see on a regular basis and what I find is it’s generally around understanding or lack of understanding of what the capabilities of these tools can be because people can be quite in not negative way, but quite shortsighted though you mentioned Scribe. And so the first thing that people comes to people’s minds is, oh great, it’s going to capture everything within a consultation. And it’s like, no, no, they do a lot more than that. And I mean the other thing that I’ve noticed, which is quite interesting, again following on from what you just said was around the payment integration side effects and generally, if that’s the way they’ve been doing it for many years, they don’t see it as a problem. And I think that’s where we come in, in how we educate the end user to say, okay, look, yes, there will be a slightly increased transactional fee, but these are the benefits and that comes to us as a provider I suppose, in making sure the customer truly understands what it is that they potentially can do and not just kind of go, okay, great, here is a product, he just does this and move on sort of thing is coming on with that ongoing support, how do you see that comes in with regards to that ongoing education?

Because obviously especially with something like a practice management system where it’s so vast, there’s so much capability. I mean look at Ascend, it does do so much. How do you as an organisation keep your clients informed about all the changes because of course they’re busy individuals as well, and so sending an email may not necessarily work quite.

Carly Clark:

Yes, unfortunately emails, we still send emails and we’ll continue to send emails, but it is an art to have the reader actually consume the content of the email. And it happens sometimes, but it’s not on mass, that’s for sure. It’s a very good question and it is something that continues to evolve with Ascend. We’ve actually built in communication loop for our practices to be able to have in-app engagement with us directly, whether it’s the product team, the support team, operations to help support them, whether it’s them feeding back to us, which is absolutely critical as well, to ensuring that we’re delivering the right strategy and we are addressing those challenges and those pain points that they have in practice to us informing them back actually we’ve listened. This is something that you’ve told us as a challenge that you have and here’s some feedback. This is something that’s going to get released.

And actually building in that capability and that resource directly within the practice management system to inform them of what’s coming is key to that adoption rate. And that’s something we’ve seen a great success and thankfully with the technology that Ascend is built on in cloud practice management systems are built on, it’s much easier for us to be able to do that within the practice management system. Huge benefit of modern technology where historically with our on-premise practice management systems, we did rely much more on webinars and in onsite days your trainers going and supporting the practice to build up that new capability and embed the new features or workflows or integrations. So it’s that combination of yes, emails definitely updating websites, blogs, webinars still are all very valid resources to have, but the in-app communication loop directly with our users to help notify them this is something that’s available, but really tying it back to the feedback that we’re gaining from the practices being key, otherwise we’re just doing it. We’re falling into a build trap where we’re just shipping features for the sake of shipping features without actually listening to what the practice, what the users need and what’s going to solve their problems to help them grow and ultimately provide that better patient care At the end of the day.

Jack Peploe:

Absolutely no, a hundred percent. Now talking about, I’m going to go in quotes here because people can’t see that new features automation, it can sound really cold or impersonal, but when done right it can reduce friction and create more space for the human care element, which is so incredibly important. What’s an example of automation that’s made a genuine difference in practice workflows from your perspective?

Carly Clark:

First of all, I think you’re absolutely right. Automation it a less shiny frame to it. It’s not seen as something especially when compared with AI as bringing that core benefit to practices. But I am a true believer that the right automation does significantly help streamline business processes. It takes that drudgery out of your daily tasks within workflows, anything from really stripping it back to automated comms, automated reminders going out, whether it’s for appointments, whether it’s for products or services that are prescriptions that are due to be refilled that the patient and the client need to come and consume that has a lot of benefit. That’s a huge manual task for users within our practice to have to go in and send these SMS and emails to their patients and their clients on a daily weekly basis. So automating that communication within your practice management system to automatically send out to your clients and patients is so key and is so beneficial and it’s core, yes, it’s maybe not as shiny as sexy as ai, but there are huge gains to be made for doing that and doing that correctly.

Even thinking about things from a stock ordering perspective and we’ve seen a number of practices, some at which have fantastic stock control to the other end of this under the spectrum unfortunately. And anything that you can do to automate what your minimum maximum stock holding level should be to then building out automatic orders to your wholesaler, again, huge benefit. Nobody wants to be spending time dredging through spreadsheets to try and establish what they want their stock holdings to be. So certain components that help automate that workflow and talk directly to the wholesaler, for example, we’ve got our covets wholesaler and pre-populating that basket within the wholesaler with what you need to order, it saves significant time. So there is a lot that automation can do to help build those workflows and remove that kind of daily pain from practices. And that’s something we’re really building in to ascend that in parallel with really looking at the workflows and not necessarily automating, but looking at really being truly workflow driven.

So that’s something we particularly pride ourselves with Erics when it comes to our practice management system, ascend, thinking about the next step, engaging with our users to understand at this point in the workflow, whether it’s the consultation through to check out what’s the next couple of steps that you gather yourself as the vet or the receptionist want to do and surfacing that into the workflow to save. We talk about reducing the clicks a lot to save your clicks is key. So it’s not necessarily automating the workflow for you, but it’s good design based on customer to really help streamline that workflow for them. Whether it’s somebody who’s been in the clinic for 10 years or a locum that’s come in for a week, being able to pick that up is so significant from a time saving perspective and from a pet parent perspective, seeing that it’s seamless, they’re getting more time with the vet, the nurse and the staff in the clinic and they’re not having to click about their software to do that. It’s so key and it’s so beneficial. Layer that on top with some more of the innovative solutions that we’re seeing come on into the market with ai. I think there’s a great combination to behave there from a time saving perspective. But yeah, definitely don’t underestimate the value that just automation and good workflow design can really have the impact that that can have in practice.

Jack Peploe:

Yeah, a hundred percent. And moving on to the next thing that you’ve referenced, which is ai and we hear a lot of talk about ai, some not really ai, probably more automation, so some bit of hype, some sort of real opportunity. What are you seeing as the most practical AI applications today?

Carly Clark:

Today? Good question. Today I think AI scribes is where I see a lot of value in practice. I think there’s, like you said, a lot of hype around AI in the market today and for me it’s really about going back to what we’ve spoken about the pain points and the challenges in practice and where can these tools really help support the practice? Saving them time and AI is a big one for me when it comes to your scribes and reducing the amount of time that’s spent on writing up your clinical notes. Like you said, it doesn’t do everything. You still need to add your charges into your consult log your vitals in the right way, map the weight, doesn’t solve all these problems for you, but it does help capture a lot of the key data from the conversation that’s had within the practice so that you’re not having to dual focus on speaking to the client and paying the right level of attention and care to the client and the patient whilst also making the notes or unfortunately having to make the notes later in the day when it’s maybe not quite as fresh.

I see a lot of value there, but there’s a combination and something that we’re exploring at the moment, which I see a lot of value in as well, is really looking at how AI can be inbuilt to your practice management system to help surface up the relevant clinical history. So for a patient who’s been a patient for a number of years and has had multiple consults over these years, it can be quite a task for the vet, the nurse to really gain a quick overview of that patient’s history. And yes, I’ll put my hands up, there’s an element of what can we do better? Just surfacing the relevant information within the practice management system directly, but actually really exploring how AI can help summarise that patient history for you is something that we’re exploring at the moment. I see great value in having that interaction at that moment, pre-consult in the practice as well. So there’s a balance there to be had. Definitely. Yeah, I

Jack Peploe:

Mean co-pilots are very interesting and it’s something which really intrigues me and I think it’s going to be, I suppose the next big step, especially with integrated solutions within the practice management system because that’s when it becomes truly incredibly powerful. I mean you mentioned obviously the fact that with scribes you still got to capture and log the weight, you’ve still got to capture log of the charges, but in theory with an integrated solution, with the practice management system, with the concept of the copilot, that could be a thing of the past, right?

Carly Clark:

Yeah, absolutely. When we look to the future at what technologies is capable of doing with, we’re only scratching the surface today with AI and automation and yeah, exactly that, how these tools can be further embedded into the practice manager system and the workflows to take a lot more of those challenges, those pain points in the clinical workflow away from you. Yeah, absolutely. I see there being endless opportunities there that can be delivered. It’s quite exciting. It’s extremely exciting. It’s a bit daunting, but it’s accepting definitely.

Jack Peploe:

So I’m going to approach this question in a slightly different way to how I would normally do with my other guests rather than thinking forward. I want to think back five years ago, what’s changed in practice management that you really didn’t fully expect and what do you think we’re underestimating about say the next five years?

Carly Clark:

Okay, good question. Very good question, Jack. When I think back to when I first joined Covets and started my foray into the veterinary industry, the world as I knew it and as our vet practices really knew it was on-premise practice management solutions. And as an industry, something that I found quite surprising was almost the reluctance to change. It was being an industry from many years ago that were not on the forefront of technology. I saw other businesses, other industries, you look at accounting, investment businesses, really starting to take a move towards even just cloud software that seven to five years ago was such a foreign concept to the veterinary industry. We had other challenges and we were wanting to really start thinking about introducing, just bringing more flexibility into clinics and trying to overcome that hurdle. Oh my gosh. Then COVID hit and we wanted to look at telehealth for example, and how we could embed that and the adoption was just not there.

And that kind of change management piece as an industry was something that we felt a lot of pushback towards. So that’s sped up over the last couple of years, and that’s something that I was certainly very surprised at five years ago, just almost we’re happy we’ve got a system that works, it does what we need it to do. We want certain amount of enhancements that are going to help speed up certain workflows or new integrations or tighter integrations, but generally server’s fine. We’ll refresh when we need to refresh, we’ll try different tools to help streamline or build somewhere of that flexibility in. But actually we’re very comfortable with where everything was at. And then you kind of jump forward another couple of years and there’s a lot more acceptance and understanding around technology. So I think that’s been the greatest shift that I’ve seen over the last couple of years is generally as an industry, the understanding of technology and the acceptance and the keenness and willingness to explore new technology and not just accept this is how something’s been done, we’re just going to stay with it because we know it works.

To actually reflecting on, yeah, that’s worked, but did it really do everything we should have had it doing and there’s more capabilities and we want a better work-life balance, we want a better mental health. The industry has really evolved in that sense over the last five years and at quite a rate of nots. I’ve really seen it over the last three years. It’s gone from being very comfortable to actually really shifting at quite a pace where the degree of acceptance and desire to drive that innovation has really significantly changed. I mean not only within the veterinary practices, but even when you look at the partner space within the industry as well, that’s evolved significantly over the years. Five years ago, we didn’t have the opportunities for partner integrations that are available today, individuals and the organisations who are building out really bespoke, strong capabilities that bolt on to your practice management system solving certain needs for practices that the PIMS just doesn’t solve today.

And I think we’re seeing that today with AI and the AI scribe space. There’s some really great partners out there that practices can integrate with. And when we look forward to the next five years, that’s going to be the biggest shift again, and it’d be really interesting to watch. Does it continue to evolve at the pace that it’s been evolving in the last three years? Does it slow down again or in fact, does it actually speed up and where we are today? I certainly see it speeding up. I think where the industry is really shifting to cloud, there are a lot of partners there that offer great solutions and how we integrate with them and meet the evolving needs of the practices and the expectation that the veterinary teams have today of what their systems are capable of and the demands of the pet pairing as well, and how that’s evolved over the years. They want to have more things at their fingertips than they’ve had historically in line with other industries. So it’s really changed over the last five years and it has been a really interesting one to see and be part of the journey for these practices to say keeps me on my toes.

Jack Peploe:

No, it’s super exciting time and I knew this was going to happen. We have come to the end of time, so I’m really sorry, but we are going to have to continue this conversation another time, Carly, but it has been such a sort of a rich and thoughtful conversation and you’ve really helped us zoom out to think beyond individual tools and really consider what it means to build the sustainable people First Tech enabled practice. Now, for anyone that’s listening who wants to follow your work or keep an eye out on the evolution of Ascend or even indeed Cora’s product strategy, where’s the best place for them to go?

Carly Clark:

Absolute best place is to head over to our website for more information. We’ve got lots of blogs and resources that are available there. You can sign up to our newsletter from our website as well. So our website is covetrus.co.uk for more information. Otherwise, if you want to reach out our marketing email marketing.uk at coras.com is a great way to get in touch with myself and the team. And we’re here. Happy to engage and answer any questions that anybody may have.

Jack Peploe:

Amazing, and obviously they will all be in the show notes. But Carly, thank you so much. It’s been such a pleasure.

Carly Clark:

Thank you, Jack. Really appreciate it. Enjoyed it. Thank you.

Jack Peploe:

Every week we ask professionals and experts to suggest a best business resource for our listeners. This week’s recommendation is from Alyssa Mages.

Alyssa Mages:

I do love up and coming things, but I’m a little bit old school and I like to read a lot, and so there’s been a lot of books this year, but the one is A Call to Life by Sonya Olson. It’s building resilience and wellbeing within the profession, and it’s not all the WOOWOO stuff, it’s really all the factual evidence of why this matters, right? And how resilience isn’t something we should expect. It is something we should teach.

Jack Peploe:

Coming up next week, we welcome Dr. Libby Kemkaran-Thompson, executive coach, behavioural neuroscientist, and creator of the Big Cat Brain tool. Libby shares her fascinating journey from veterinary surgeon to leadership coach, helping professionals understand how the brain shapes behaviour, fulfilment, and success. We dive into the neuroscience of stress and burnout, explore her big cap brain model for building stronger teams and discuss how leaders can manage not just output but energy. Libby also opens up about the mindset traps that hold people, especially women back, and how to tame your brain to unlock your full potential.

Libby Kemkaran-Thompson:

I suddenly realised so much of behaviour is biochemical, sort of, it comes from this. It’s think, feel, do you start a think that just pops into your brain? You dunno where it comes from, but it’s usually subconscious. 95% of everything we do every day is from the subconscious brain, which is crazy. And why, because we didn’t die yesterday. So our brain has got this set up and it’s like a hard wiring behind your eyes to keep you alive because your brain is designed to keep you alive. Not happy is the point, which is terrifying. So we’re a little machines walking around on the planet just trying to stay alive, and so we can be miserable to sin. And so I started figuring out that, oh my God, it’s actually my job. It’s my job to feel good no matter what happens to me.

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.