With over a decade of clinical veterinary experience under his belt, James Price knows the fast-paced, unpredictable nature of veterinary life very well. From starting his career in a busy Tier 3 hospital to working across a wide range of practices and settings, James understands how vital the right technology can be in keeping a vet practice running smoothly. Now a Business Analyst at VetIT, James combines his frontline experience with his passion for tech to help design and develop Vet IT’s veterinary software so that it works the way vets do.
In this article, James reflects on what makes a great veterinary PMS (practice management system), sharing his views on everything from time-saving features to legal compliance and the growing role of integrations and Artificial Intelligence (AI). James’ clinical experience and deep interest in veterinary technology brings with it a unique perspective on how tech can reduce frustration, increase efficiency, and ultimately help vets to spend more time in their day with their patients.
My career started in clinical practice and for over a decade I worked as a vet in a wide variety of different settings. I began my veterinary career in a busy Tier 3 hospital after graduating from the Royal Veterinary College in 2012. That hospital had a high clinical caseload, so I was often dealing with emergency cases and complex surgeries. I worked there for six years. After that I was a locum vet for a while and I had my own limited company, then I progressed into a management role at a large veterinary company during the pandemic.
Over time, I found myself becoming more interested in the operational side of vet practice life. I liked working in management because I think it’s great to have the opportunity to help people on a broader scale rather than just as your own one person. That helped my organisational skills a lot because, like a lot of vets, I was always very busy! I thoroughly enjoyed working in practice. However, I’ve always had a keen interest in veterinary technology so I liked to look at tech and how it could help with processes and making things easier. I was very lucky that the opportunity to work at VetIT on its technology came about because it’s an excellent chance to combine my veterinary and management experience alongside developing my technical career.
Now that I see both sides, I can understand how systems can either create a lot of friction or reduce it. When a veterinary PMS isn’t intuitive or requires too many steps to do something basic, it slows you down. You end up fighting the software instead of focusing on the patient in front of you.
How a veterinary PMS can help practice workflows
I think every vet I’ve spoken to or worked with has one thing in common. They’re all busy. Anything that can be done to help with the busyness of the lifestyle is always greatly received by vets. Often, I’d find that with a poor PMS system, you could be spending a huge amount of time on things that don’t need to be that difficult if the system were set up properly. Things running smoothly really does make or break a day! In vet practice, that could be anything from finding the right clinical history, to making sure a repeat prescription is logged correctly to checking that the follow-up is booked in and recorded for the vet who is on shift that day. If the PMS makes you click into three or four different screens to do those things, you just end up wasting time. If you’re already falling a little behind in your day and on top of that, something that could be taking five seconds takes 50, then it can quite quickly be very derailing. If you also then do that 30 times a day, you are potentially losing a couple of consults worth of time, and that time could be spent with patients.
I find the ‘actions when booked’ function of the VetIT system extremely helpful. Normally, I would have several tasks to complete if I were admitting a new patient, such as finding the consent form, printing it off, getting it from the printer, getting the owner to sign it and filing it, so it was a bit of a hassle. With ‘actions when booked’ I would be able to note that the patient is being booked for a surgical procedure, and the system could source and print the relevant forms for me. It’s a massive time saver.
It’s also about making it as easy as possible to do the right thing and having the information you need in the right place at the right time, without having to dig for it. Over the last few years, there have been several big changes in how vets are required to record and document what they’re prescribing. I’ve really enjoyed working on bringing the VetIT system in line with the current requirements and thinking about what could come next.
A PMS built for communication
One of the most valuable things a veterinary PMS can do is make communication between team members smooth. In practice, there are always cases being handed over from one vet to another, across shifts, between departments or in an out-of-hours setting. In my vetting days, most of the patients I saw at two o’clock in the afternoon had already been seen by another vet earlier in the day. In those situations, a well-structured medical record is essential. You need to be able to work through a large amount of information quickly, in a time-sensitive scenario, and act appropriately. The ’tasks’ feature in VetIT is a very efficient way of improving handovers. If it’s used well, it can create a trackable chain of communication between the practice team. Instead of chasing messages across multiple platforms or relying on verbal updates, everything you need to know about a case is in the system.
Third-party integrations also have a big role to play. Whether it’s a lab system, imaging platform, or accounting software, being able to connect these directly into your veterinary PMS means you’re not logging into multiple systems or manually moving information around. This also means that all the necessary information can feed directly into the patient record. That saves time but also means the whole team has a single, accurate record to work from.
The future of vets and AI
AI is something that’s becoming harder to ignore in the veterinary world. I love to talk about it, it ties in well with my interest in veterinary technology and where it’s going! Like many people, I think there was an initial hesitation about how it might impact the profession, but the more I’ve seen of it, the more I believe it can be used to make our lives easier rather than replacing the human side of what we do. My wife is also a vet, so I see both at work and at home just how busy and varied the job can be. Neither of us want technology to get in the way of the relationships and trust that are at the core of the job, but if it can save time on repetitive, low-value tasks and support the VetIT system in doing that further, that’s a huge win.
I also think there’s a real opportunity for AI to help with handovers and record keeping, summarising key points from a case so the next vet has everything they need to go ahead with the consult as soon as they pick up the notes.
Ultimately, AI isn’t going to replace vets or nurses, but it could give us back time in the day to spend with our patients and clients. If it’s integrated thoughtfully into the PMS, I think it could become an invaluable tool for the whole veterinary team.
We’ve been there…
VetIT has always been forward thinking, with a passion for using the latest veterinary technology to support a modern, dynamic vet practice. Our team includes former vets, vet nurses and practice managers, so we understand the pressures, priorities and the workarounds you wish you didn’t need.
We’ve been there, so our goal is to make daily life in practice easier by developing software designed by the vet team, for the vet team.
If you’d like to talk to one of our Technology Consultants about how our tech can help your practice, please click here, simply fill out the form and one of our colleagues will be in touch.
