Enterprise Cloud Practice Management
By Jonathan Holloway
Our history with building Practice Management Systems (PMS or PIMS) goes back to 1994 when the “Jup Vet” system was launched in the UK. Fast forward 28+ years and a lot has changed in the practice management space.
The original PMS was installed, on-premise at the veterinary practice and typically was confined to a single database. After two versions of “Jup Vet”, the Enterprise product was launched, followed by the Voyager product. Both were on-premise, and desktop based applications, allowing multiple practices to synchronise data for the sharing of patient data and history for treatment, diagnostics and follow-up care.
Welcome to Merlin Cloud
In 2014 we launched the first private cloud hosted practice management system “Merlin” and migrated over to the public cloud Microsoft Azure a few years later. This meant that practice management staff had access to their PMS using a standard web-browser with all data stored securely in the cloud. Fundamentally, they could access data from any standard PC with a web-browser. Whilst this isn’t revolutionary today in other vertical markets, it was within the veterinary industry. 80% of PMS/PIMS software in North America is still on-premise and a fair number of practices in the UK and Europe still use legacy desktop based, on-premise solutions.
Practice Management History
MWI Enterprise Products
MWI Enterprise Product Suite
MWI has rolled out an enterprise cloud based solution over the last two years for 1500+ practice sites in the UK, all running in Microsoft Azure. That product suite consists of a number of key applications:
- Merlin PMS Application – to support operations within your practices;
- MWI PET –a pet parent solution to practices for appointments and comms;
- Swift Mobile Treatment Application – a mobile treatment app for mobile vets;
- Online Store - for Business Practices to order drugs and consumables;
- Our Enterprise development platform and API to extend Merlin to other areas of your business and integrate with wider applications.

Cloud Rocks, On-Premise is Old Hat!
On-premise has several disadvantages:
- You need an IT department or vendor to administer and correct issues on the software, and hardware, running in your practice. That’s costly, cumbersome and time consuming when it comes to resolving operational problems
- You have a single point of failure if the hardware fails or there is a network issue
- You are prone to operating system viruses and security issues if other people use the system for browsing the web or they use external USB devices or hard-drives
- You have to replace costly hardware every few years to run the PMS or PIMS solution.
Extend the PMS with Integrations
All of our mobile and web products today integrate with our Enterprise Veterinary Platform and Open API. We understand we cannot build everything for your veterinary business in one product, so we utilise our Open API to integrate various third-party applications. Today this includes approximately twenty different applications including:
- Plexi – a complete referrals solution for your practice;
- MWI Home Delivery – providing home delivery services for your applications;
- PVA – healthcare plans solution;
- Vet Impress – a mobile solution for recording treatment in a farm scenario;
- Petsapp, Virtual Recall and Vetstoria – communication and engagement tools for your practice;
- IDEXX, Antech, Milab, Abaxis - laboratory integrations for your practice.
Why API's Rock
An Application Programming Interface (API) sounds very technical, but as a business owner it’s a critical part of extending your PMS and associated applications in your digital journey as a business.
We provide a veterinary integration platform to allow you to build applications and integrations on top of several core elements:
- Contacts, Patients and Staff Members;
- Appointment Management;
- Practice Locations;
- Etc.…
That enables you to evolve your business in-line with where you want to go, rather than us focusing on building everything into a single core product. Ultimately, we are a suite of interconnected applications and integrations in a unified veterinary ecosystem.