By Lilian Schaer
Like many countries, Canada is dealing with a growing shortage of veterinarians, particularly in rural and remote areas and especially for large animal and livestock medicine. The clinics that are practicing are struggling to keep up, leaving veterinarians and their staff overwhelmed and overworked.
A father-son team from Ontario has come up with a solution that is helping both veterinary practices and farmers — a telemedicine platform called VETSon developed by veterinarian Glen Yates and his son Colin.
Vet clinics join the VETSon service and provide their clients with a login to the system. This lets them access their veterinarian’s practice digitally, including through telemedicine visits and virtual locum services to fill temporary gaps.
With a focus on mixed and large animal practices, to date VETSon has about 10 clinics in Ontario, Alberta, Prince Edward Island and Yukon using their software. Many farmers without access to a veterinarian have been able to connect to a veterinary practice by downloading the VETSon app on Google Play or the App Store.
In addition to veterinary service, a key component of the system is e-commerce ordering and delivery of animal medicines. Traditionally, clients have always had to source prescribed medications through their veterinary clinic, an approach that was cumbersome and not particularly convenient for both sides.
Last year, VETSon received funding through the Ontario Agri-Food Research Initiative (OAFRI) Commercialization Stream to improve their platform for veterinarians in Ontario. OAFRI is funded by the governments of Canada and Ontario through the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership (Sustainable CAP), a five-year federal-provincial-territorial initiative.
“A core function of the business model is streamlining how medications get to clients. With our e-commerce ordering system, the practices send prescriptions to their distributors and the distributors ship the products directly to the clients,” explains Colin Yates. “This helps vets save on carrying inventory and reduces the amount of staff time spent managing that inventory and shipping orders out.” So far, the e-commerce option is available only in Ontario as shipping medications direct to farms across provincial boundaries is challenging — veterinarians are regulated separately in each province — but Yates notes that it’s the feature most in demand by the clinics they work with.
“Most industries are used to getting things shipped directly to clients; everybody is used to getting Amazon deliveries,” he says. “Veterinary medicine is a bit behind in this area, so we are helping them catch up from a tech perspective.”
With the funding from OAFRI, VETSon was able to complete a successful e-commerce pilot with a few Ontario clinics and a distributor, which has paved the way for bringing other Ontario practices on board. A venture investor has also expressed interest in working with the company as a result of the successful pilot.
“Right now, we have multiple orders going to remote farms weekly that wouldn’t be able to get medication any other way because they don’t have clinic access and that’s where the biggest value is,” he believes. “Since launching the app, we’ve had over 600 animal owners, mostly in Ontario, connect to us to access veterinary services.”
The Canadian market is challenging as regulations differ by province, but according to Yates, Ontario is quite forward-thinking with respect to telemedicine and being able to get medications directly to farms on behalf of a veterinarian via a distributor. This makes the province a model for others to follow, he notes.
“We are using Ontario to demonstrate that this system is possible, that prescriptions are issued and that we can trace medications; it provides a sense of security for regulators and is helping open up new opportunities,” he adds.
VETSon recently formed a partnership with the government in Yukon to provide telemedicine services to farmers in the territory. It’s been a gamechanger for Bridget Hurlburt, a mixed farmer who had no access to any veterinary services previously for her 150 cows, 200 pigs, 75 boarded horses and small sheep flock. She’s been using VETSon regularly for herd health emergencies, simply by pulling up the app and booking a visit when needed.
“We definitely need their services. We don’t have vets for livestock available in Yukon so this is extremely useful, and they’re also able to teach us how to do our own procedures,” she says. “We haven’t had access to this level of knowledge before to know what kind of medications to use, what we’re doing right or wrong etc. We’re extraordinarily happy with how quickly they respond and thankful that they’re available at the other end of the line.”
For VETSon, the OAFRI pilot project helped complete what Yates hopes will be a stepping stone to expansion into other provinces and other countries as the large animal veterinary shortage is a global issue with widespread impacts.
“If you can’t get medication to a farm, you aren’t providing support to the farms or the vets and the funding sped up the process to get this done and provide support to our partners to participate in the pilot,” he added. “It’s the beginning of what the VETSon platform will be, a core service that will make large animal veterinary practices sustainable moving forward.”