Q&A: Why veterinary practices need technology that stays out of the way

Technology should support veterinary teams, not slow them down. In this Q&A, Ellie Waldron, Customer Product Consultant Manager, MWI Animal Health, and Ryan Norton, Director of Product, MWI Animal Health, discuss how trust in technology is built within veterinary practices, what product teams still need to understand about practice life, and how better system design can reduce friction and save time.

What do product teams still need to understand about practice life?

Ellie Waldron: From a developer’s point of view, they just think of how a workflow gets from A to B rather than what would actually happen inside a practice. So, on my team, we only have either former veterinary nurses or practice managers, and we are consistently giving feedback on what we would have liked to see in practice. We say, “yeah that’s great but no one’s got time to click there and do this.” Our developers are learning about the veterinary industry. We need to make tools that work specifically for veterinary professionals.

What stood out most about the veterinary profession from a product perspective?

Ryan Norton: The shock for me was that veterinary professionals are so dedicated to their work and their patients they don’t care about the tools. They are in this because they want to look after animals. Obviously, we build technology to enable practices to do things, but it’s actually our job to keep out of the way.

And in an ideal world, you’d have a practice management system that’s invisible and so intuitive you could just talk to it and it does the things you need it to do. But they’re [PMS] complex systems and we have to ask, “how can we can enable veterinarians and all the people in practice to do the thing they’re there for?”

If you could redesign a PMS, what would you change?

Ellie Waldron: The over-complexity of having to do multiple clicks to get into the area you need. It should be intuitive because in this industry people move from practice to practice so much. It shouldn’t be that you go into a practice and use new PMS, you look at it and think, “I haven’t got a clue where to even start.” You should just fly around it without fighting with it. The user experience should get you where you need to go.

How do you avoid feature bloat in a practice management system?

Ryan Norton: Well, unfortunately, I don’t think there’s a straightforward answer. You are building things because you are trying to keep up with the market. We sense check everything we create. Is this adding value or is it increasing complexity?

And I’m also a big fan of if we’re adding something, what are we taking away? We have UX designers who come from a human-centered perspective.

We have a cohort of practices we talk to regularly in terms of what is solving their problems right now. And if it isn’t, then okay, we need to go back and rethink it.

Can better product design save time in practice?

Ellie Waldron: When a client leaves the consultation room and returns to the reception desk to book a follow-up appointment, they’ve absorbed so much information but don’t know when they need to come back. We created a follow-up appointment feature which allows the veterinarian or the nurse to put all the details into Merlin. That feeds to the reception team who book it. There’s no reason for the reception team to knock on the vet’s door and ask, what’s the plan? For every consult it’s saving two to three minutes. When you see 30-40 consults a day, that’s a lot of time that’s being saved.

What should practice teams focus on as technology becomes more embedded in daily practice?

Ellie Waldron: Putting the time and the effort into knowing the power of the practice management system and what it can do for you. What are your business goals? Do you want to see more people join up to healthcare plans? Do you want to get more people reacting and coming in on the back of their vaccinations?

It’s ensuring that they’re getting the best out of their PMS, not getting attracted by something shiny and new outside of it.

What does trust in technology look like in a veterinary practice?

Ryan Norton: Trust is inherently emotional. Brands talk about having trust elements with customers, with users, and that’s because people invest a certain amount of emotion into it.

It also involves reliability and the capability. If I have invested my time in you and the service that you provide, but you don’t deliver against it, then that’s gradually going to erode any trust that I have in you. Here at MWI, with the products that we offer to our customers, stability is an important aspect. Both the stability of the tech but also the stability of who am I talking to?

How often can I speak to somebody? Those communication channels are a huge part of what we do.

Ellie Waldron: I think my point of view, because I was pet owner, when I used to go into practice, I didn’t think about it. I didn’t care what a practice management system was. I just put my trust in the vets and the nurses that they were giving me all the information and the advice and the care that I needed.

Then I went into practice as a veterinary nurse, I was like, oh, okay, so this is what a practice management system does. It’s more than just taking notes. And I was learning more about why vets use a practice management system and how much we relied on it. And as a pet owner, I didn’t think about any of that. I just trusted the vets. And the vets need to trust their practice management system so that the pet owners can trust them. The trust passes on.