Hello Chadwick from the webinar Vets welcoming you to another episode of Vet Chat. Very, very happy today to have Mike Mossop on the line. Mike is the Chief Veterinary Officer of COVET.
It is about 18 months since he was on the podcast. I know some of you will have seen that podcast or listened to that podcast. If you haven't, Mike, it would be very nice maybe for you to just.
Introduce yourselves, tell us a little bit about yourself, it's been a long time, hasn't it, since we've seen each other, I think it's at least 2 or 3 days, we've just at least 48 hours I think. Yeah, we, we've come back from sunny cities where we were at a conference called Vet Forum, which was a great event, really good, nice to have some sun. But now we're back.
Covet are also partnering with us in May 2026 talking about AI, the internet, cybersecurity. It's one of our themes, we think it's a really, really important theme that vets are aware of because it's becoming a bigger and bigger issue and, and you know, particularly cybersecurity as well. Er there are certain things that we can do, so we'll talk about some of those things, but before we do.
Mike just a a reminder to people er a little bit about your history and what you're up to. Yeah, sure, absolutely. And first, I'll, I'll just say thanks for having me on, Anthony.
It's always a, a pleasure to talk to you. So, I appreciate that. And, as you said, my name is Mike Mossop.
I'm one of the co-founders of COVED. I am the chief Veterinary Officer. So I, I am a veterinarian first and foremost, graduated from, the Ontario Veterinary College in Guelph in 2009.
I've been through a number of different roles in practise, everything from a, a new graduate working in emergency to, a medical director at a general practise. I, I ran my own technology forward mobile service for a number of years before kind of fully moving over to the software side with COVED. And I'm based in Ottawa, Canada.
I have a, a wife and 3 daughters here. So, very busy, busy life, feeling very fortunate to be where I am and, and It's cool to see everything that's been happening with COVID. It's, it's changed a lot, even just in the last 18 months since we last spoke.
It's just growing so fast and of course I think. I, I think, did you say over 100 people working in the business now? Yeah, yeah, so it's, yeah, it started as, as 3 of us, maybe 2.5 years ago, and, and I think we've just crossed the 100 threshold in terms of employees, so it's, it's pretty mind blowing.
I think part of that is you are solving a big problem in the business, obviously there's a lot of scribes about, we talked a little bit about that in that forum and I thought it was really interesting some of the the stats that you showed. But you know, being agnostic for a second, you know, a scribe that works really well, that is able to take down the conversation, immediately you're just more present with the client first and foremost. But I know a lot of people kind of wait till the end of the day to kind of catch up on notes or doing it during lunchtime, so they don't have those breaks either in which, time to decompress and also to get home early so I you know some fabulous testimonials that I saw speaking to individual people at events, it's a huge problem.
And you've obviously been one of the first in the market that's that's solving that problem, aren't you? Yeah, and I, I, I think you're right, it's just the, the magnitude of, of the pain point really is part of the reason for our success. I mean, I think we've executed well and there's a whole other story there, but, you know, just to say there, there are a lot of issues in the veterinary industry, and, and I, I know this myself, like the, the reason I left practise is because I was a little bit burnt out, right?
And It's a, a very difficult job, and, and I think a lot of that is the, the documentation and the communication part. And again, that's exactly what, what COVET and, and other AI scribes or, or co-pilot type tools are, are solving first and foremost. We're, I, I think now maturing to a stage where we're starting to branch out beyond that and, and build in other tools, but that really is the, the foundation for sure.
And And like you said, it's just the the magnitude of the problem and the opportunity for improvement in terms of efficiency, time savings, cognitive load, stuff like that has been massive, so. And I think we're probably quite similar because in that sense, you know, when I set up Webinarvet 16 years ago, it was the same thing. I set it up because one it was really expensive to do the CPD, it cost a lot of time.
There was a, you know, a money cost as well to sort of end of surgery driving, you know, 30 miles to a hotel room somewhere to hear somebody speaking for an hour. You know, it was very time inefficient and so when I set it up it moved very quickly because everybody was thinking. Why has nobody else done this, and sometimes it is, you know, because it wasn't even the PMS systems that were doing this first, it was somebody from the, you know, both vets in practise like the two of us were going, there has to be a better way of doing this, and then seeing that the technology was starting to come into place to make it, Possible to do it, you know, for me it was go to webinar, 1000, 1000 places in a virtual lecture theatre for $99 a month, and being able to have decent internet, now for you it's having some of these great, AI tools that you can borrow off as well as obviously the, the information and the knowledge that you have amongst the team as well.
Yeah, I mean, there's no question that the, the technology and these underlying large language models and, and, you know, chat GPT becoming kind of more widely available around 2023, you know, all of that is, is definitely a, a prerequisite for what we're doing now and, and we've kind of built on, on top of that and made it more veterinary specific, but yeah, you take the size of the pain point and, and that new technology and the solution is fairly obvious and you're, you're right, there's a lot of competition in the space as well, like there are a number of providers that was kind of the The subject of my talk at at Vet Forum recently was really if, if you're a business in the space and you're considering, adopting an AI tool, like how, how do you pick which one to use? Because it is, it is a very noisy space, right? There's a lot of information out there.
Not everything is as it seems on, on the surface. So, I think that's a issue that a lot of people are, are dealing with now, you know, the, the idea of this technology is a little bit more common. It's not to say that everybody is, is in the know, but I, I think most vets are, are at least aware that, that these scribes and co-pilot type tools exist.
And now it's kind of more digging down into the details of what separates one from the other. So. And I think sometimes for me with modern day marketing, you know it used to be you put loads of adverts out everywhere and then people would go right we're gonna use the Nikon camera or whatever whereas the way we look at it now is we rely much more on reviews so actually, you know, in some ways we don't need to dig deep cos we go to what other people have said, we hear some really positive news from those, we perhaps speak to them if we need to, we, we rely much more on, Independent people cos you're gonna say your scribe is great, you know, you're not gonna say actually it's got loads of faults, but we like it cos there's good, so I, I'm much more interested as much as I like you Mike when I hear really positive testimonials because of course, that the proof of the pudding is in the eating and if they've already eaten the pudding and like it, then let me have some of that pudding.
Yeah, no, I, I, 100%, and I, I think the whole proof is in the pudding thing. That's, that's what I tell people, right? Like I, I, I think part of the decision making process is actually to try out some of this software, like in, in real world circumstances and, and get a feel for it.
I guess I'm, I'm the kind of person who likes to kind of tinker and experiment, and I, I know not everybody is like that, but it's, it's really the only way you can truly get a feel for how one of these solutions is, is going to work for your specific circumstance, but You know, next to that, there's no question that the testimonials are extremely important to us, and I, I think, you know, it's, it's kind of the same thing in, in veterinary medicine, right? In terms of practises and choosing the, the vet clinic you're going to go to, like word of mouth and, and recommendations from Friends, family, colleagues are much more powerful. Yeah, well, I mean, to Google, I think, is a step down, but like if your best friend is like, hey, I tried this out, it's amazing.
You got to check it out, and they can show you some stuff. Like I, I think that is, you know, by far the best marketing we can get, and we get some really amazing testimonials. I, I mean, I know you've seen some of them, but You know, people deciding to stay in practise instead of retiring because we're now available or, or people being able to go home and have dinner with their family for the first time in, you know, decades because of, of our technology.
Like these things are, they're very moving and it, it's, you know, it's good in terms of the business and, and spreading the word, but honestly, it's also the main motivating factor for the team, right? We, we see all of this coming in. We have like a specific testimonial channel in our internal Slack or communication tool.
And yeah, when these things roll in, I, I mean, people are commenting and looking, and it, it does really help drive the team. It's, it's interesting in that You know, a lot of our employees are from the veterinary space, so we, we have, you know, 10+ vets on staff, we've got 20 to 30, you know, former technicians, nurses, practise managers on the sale and support team, but then we do also get, you know, especially in the, the marketing and engineering side, people who have no prior experience with the vet industry and I think for them, you know, for, for an engineer, for instance, like it's just much more tangible and meaningful to be working on a, a product like ours where they see it's making a, a real difference in people's lives as opposed to, you know, optimising a, a, you know, a buy now button in a Facebook algorithm or something like that, so a game on a phone or whatever. Yeah, yeah, so, so anyway, it, it, it again, it helps move the needle for us internally as well, and, and those testimonials are, are very important.
Yeah, I must admit it is a crowded space. I was at VMX and almost every other stand booth or whatever you want to call it, seemed to be a scribe. But I noticed you're getting some big groups in like Vets for Pets in the UK.
I know you've been with Pet folk a long time in America. And I mean there was, I think there was a stat at Vet Forum, is it over 1000 practises now that you're in. So, it's, it's more like 10,000 actually at, at this point.
So like it, it's quite large and that, that's roughly split, you know, kind of 50% corporate groups and corporate practises and 50% independent. So we, we think that's a, a healthy mix, but yeah, there's no question that the, the groups play a large role for us. There's Vets for Pets and, and CVS in the UK and I, I believe there's a couple others that are coming in the near future as, as well that I can't quite speak to yet, but, you know, at, at the same time.
Most clinics out there are, are independent, right? And, and, you know, it's, it's interesting and that we have a very We kind of have a, a, a double approach in, in terms of sales, like part of it is, is top down and, and speaking to these groups and securing larger contracts, but a, a lot of it is much more grassroots, and, you know, this again kind of circles back a little bit to the, the word of mouth and more, I don't want to say old fashioned sales technique, but basically cold, cold outreach and stuff like that. And, and the thing that's worked really well for us is, again, you get one veterinarian in a practise who adopts the tool, and they, they enjoy it, they like it, it works for them, and then it kind of spreads like wildfire, right?
Like their colleagues are looking over their shoulder to see what's going on. They're telling their friends that work at a practise down the street. So it, it can also be very, organic in, in that sense.
And I think in, in some cases, actually, that's helped us with some of the groups is you get, you know, a couple of vets using it, and then it's the whole clinic is using it, and it spreads to the other clinic, and all of a sudden they're, they're telling management that like, hey, you guys got to figure out some, some deal for us. So, so yeah, it's kind of this double approach, and it's, it's worked for us well. Yeah, brilliant.
If we can move away, particularly from COVID now really to talk a little bit more about I suppose AI and cybersecurity and those sort of issues where you see them going over the next. Year or two, obviously I we were talking before we came on and I remember being at Spis probably 18 months ago and, Somebody asked, have you heard about chat GPT and nobody really had. Obviously I haven't heard about it by that stage because it's the space we're in, but we kind of think everybody knows about these things, so we're still in a time of discovery.
I, I do think chat it'd be really interesting, probably for us to do a survey, I would guess maybe something Amelia we should do, I know Amelia is listening in from on high there, so. We could do that, but I would guess it must be really well known now that's probably the most famous one, but there obviously are other tools, like Gemini and so on aren't are you using all of the tools or how are you using them pretty much one in the business and then two maybe How do you see vets using them outside of the business, independently of perhaps what you're doing? Yeah, so I mean, I, I, I use a number of tools from a, a number of different providers whether it's Gemini, chat GBT, and anthropic, and I, I don't think the average person needs to do that, right?
Like, again, I'm working in an AI software company. Most of what I'm doing. There is, is work related, but, you know, I do use chat GBT in my personal life as well.
Like, I, I have it, like, help me meal plan and, and create a grocery list and stuff like that. And it's actually kind of, you know, again, it's a busy family life, so it's freed me up in a lot of ways. I use it, home improvement, you know, random questions.
So I, I use it for all kinds of things, and it, it, you know, 11 thing I guess to flag for people is Like free chat GBT accounts, your data is fair game, right? Like that's part of the issue with having a free account. I have a, a paid account and we have an enterprise agreement, so I have kind of like my personal workspace carved out separate from my work or yeah, my personal workspace carved out from my work one, but It's on the same account and, and we as COVAT have these enterprise level agreements with any of these major providers, that does not allow them to use our data, right?
So it gives me some comfort in my personal life, but more importantly, you know, these services, and I, I'm happy to explain this a little bit more, but like, COVED is, is built on top of these foundational large language models, and, you know, the, the enterprise agreements that we have with them are extremely important, and it basically means that they are not allowed to use our data in any way, shape or form, whether it's selling it or training models, that kind of stuff, and that's part of the reason COEC can kind of promise that that your data is safe and secure, and again, happy to kind of expand on that in more detail too. Yeah, well I think you know that whole cybersecurity piece is so important, we're seeing, you know, more and more people being hacked in their systems, really clever phishing technology, even people, you know, ringing you up to get some of your voice and then turning that into a message to send to somebody else so they think it's you. Er that side of things, you know, the AI and cybersecurity and the internet, there's been so many advantages.
But there certainly are disadvantages aren't there where you can see that people need to be. So much more careful, the con man of yesterday is who, who went to doors and maybe sold, you know, paving stones to do the patio or whatever and never turned up. It's now completely different because it's all online, isn't it?
Yeah, no, and, and you're right, and it, it, I think it's tricky as well. I, I mean, I am, as much as I am involved in, in designing some of our software, like I, I'm not a coder, I'm not a software engineer, right? So my level of understanding is, is probably more similar to your average vet out there, listening in the audience as opposed to a, a computer programmer, and it's It's tough to understand all of all of this stuff on a really technical level.
I mean, I, I think. You know, the, the best assurances we can give. Certainly, like, again, we have this policy of, of not sharing data, not selling data, not, using it to train models, but we've made it a point to go out and get certain internationally recognised certification.
So, like these, some of these might be meaningful. To, to your listeners, some of them might not, but like GDPR compliance is, is one of them that obviously is, is very familiar in Europe and is, is basically a, a set of standards that you need to follow best practises, security implementations that a, a company has to run to get that certification. And, and, you know, we've gone beyond that to get some more technical ones.
There's something called SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO compliance. There's PIPITA compliance in, in Canada, HIPAA compliance in the US and again, we've gone out and pursued each and every one of those, and, and you'll see it's kind of front, not front and centre, but down on our web page towards the bottom, you can see all that and You know, I, I think for the non-technical person, that is the, the best shorthand to know that, hey, this, this software provider is, is taking this stuff seriously, and, and they are doing as much as they possibly can to ensure that, data is safe and secure. And I, I do think, you know, when you're looking for any software, Especially something like an AI scribe or co-pilot that's going to be used in clinic and have all this sensitive practise and, and client data.
Like you, you want to make sure that the companies have those certifications. If, if, you know, you're a big group and you have a whole IT department, you can dive a little deeper. But those are kind of the best reassurances I can give, you know, honestly, if If there's some phishing scam and somebody gets your password, that's a little different.
It's, it's harder to protect from, from that, right? So, I guess the best advice, and I think most people have a feel for this, is just to be extremely sceptical of random emails that are coming in. If things look at all suspicious, you know, I'll get an email that looks like it's coming from my bank, and it might tell me something and say like, hey, click here to connect and It might be right, like it might be legit, but I'll purposefully go out of the way to, you know, instead, I, I won't click on the email.
I'll go call my bank and say, hey, I've received this message. Is it legitimate? That kind of thing.
And I, I think exercising that scepticism is important, but I, I get that it's, you know, these scams are getting increasingly sophisticated. The emails don't quite stand out the way they used to. So it, it's, it's tough out there, but obviously do your best to, to be protective of your important information.
I think sometimes because we live such busy lives and something comes in from TSB or you know from somebody who you know is abroad wanting some money and you look at TSB and it's got an extra T in it. You know it can be these tiny mistakes can't it and I, I know we were doing some training on it and it was very much also now our passwords are becoming increasingly less secure so when you go on to chat GPT they often ask for your email but then send you a code to your email so all of these things are are making us more secure but it's very easy to want to bypass some of those things if we're busy and that's when often the mistakes are made, aren't they? Yeah, and I think again this might, is probably a little bit beyond my technical knowledge, but like I, I use a password software, right?
So, it's called Dashlane. I actually quite like it. I mean, we have no paid affiliation with them at at COVED, but I, I use it for both my work passwords and my personal passwords, and again, they are certified with all these different compliances, but frankly, I don't know what half of my passwords are like it's just a long string of random characters and, and more and more, I, I know it's also moving to a world where, you know, running on an email and password, regardless of what password it is, is not that secure, so moving to two factor authentication and passkeys and things like that and, you know, basically biometric identification via your phone as like a second step and so.
That's kind of the, the future of online security, I, I think, and again, I've used Dashlane, this, this online provider, I LastPass and one password or, or some other ones, but I've found that to be incredibly useful, and it, it does kind of help me feel secure if there's a, you know, I don't know, my Facebook has a hack, it, it sends me an alert. It's like, hey, you know, this, this system has been hacked, you're, you're in there, you might want to change your passwords, and again, helps me manage that stuff. So that's, that's the approach I've taken, and it's worked fairly well for now, so.
And I think if you can be as secure as possible, hackers probably like bullies go for the weakest link, don't they, so they go for people who, you know, have got password 123, that's a sort of easy password presumably. I mean that's my understanding again, not, not being a scammer myself, I don't know the ins and outs, but, but yeah, I, I think that's the thing, if you only have to, where is it, you're being chased by a bear, you only have to like outrun the slowest person in, in some ways, so, so yeah. I just wanted to talk a little bit, perhaps towards the end around .
Certainly in the UK we've just had the, a thing called the Competitions association of Women. I've sort of been er asking about various things. I think in the end it's been a bit more er washed down than we thought it might be, but, What I sort of came upon was that whole idea of you know pricing clarity on websites and so on, but also what I then thought in a more deep way was, very much around communications and I think going back maybe to the scribes again is, That when we take notes ourselves, you know, we leave things out, er we may not mention some of the things that were actually spoken, whereas when we take a very concise and and, you know, take all of this sort of conversation, the fact that we've talked about price and things, it does make it.
Less likely that somebody can complain if they come back and say well you never talked about price but it's there in the record, you've perhaps been able to send them an email post the consultation that you can say, here are my recommendations, here are the medicines we've given you, this is what we want to do next, this is going to be the costs of that. It really makes communication much more clear, and I know listening to VDS our Veterinary Defence Society in the UK, Royal College Complaints Department, most of those things, complaints and claims that come through. Are due to a poor communication style than actually anything wrong with what actually what the vet's done, they just haven't communicated very well so, You know I I feel that scribes again can be incredibly useful, not only in saving time, but also, you know, protecting you from the worry of having a Royal College letter drop on your on your er floor or you know a a claim from a client who was unhappy with how things weren't going to the Veterinary Defence Society.
Yeah, absolutely, and I know like the CMA has had a, a, a lot of implications. It's interesting, maybe you mentioned it's maybe not been as big, but I, I guess in my perception, like I, I know it is a topic people are, are talking about and it does, you know, basically adds to the stuff that veterinary clinics have to worry. About, right, there's a, there's a lot going on, you know, when you mention complaints, like I'm, I'm fortunate enough, I, I practised really full time for about 15 years, and I only ever had one official complaint during that time.
But it was, it was really stressful, right? And, and it was frivolous. Like, it wasn't.
It was dismissed. It was, you know, there's no credible medical complaint, but it was about a two year process, and it just so happened like that, the person on the other end, the person who had complained was a, a lawyer and was very litigious and we're just throwing like reams and reams of documentation at the complaints committee. And I, I do think You know, with a product like COVID, there's kind of two ways this helps.
So you, you mentioned more complete documentation and, and we can talk about how it helps get, you know, stuff home with clients, especially with relation to, to prescriptions cause I know there's some requirements through the CMA for that. But the, the other thing that some vets may, may not realise like, When you're using COVED, you're, you're recording these conversations, and basically that conversation gets turned into a transcript, which can be a little messy and, and can have some transcriptions error errors in it. But then we use, you know, our, our AI tools and, and some pre and post processing to turn that transcript into the finished document or the finished email that, that you really see.
But in the event of a complaint, That transcript and the audio recording are still there. Like we, we have a policy of keeping all of that data for at least 7 years, unless you choose to delete it. Like if the if the end user deletes it, it's gone forever and we can't recover it.
That's the idea, like it's your data, you can do what you want, but for people who leave those recordings and transcripts in place, it, it is. It's a a real asset in terms of defence in, in these kinds of complaint cases, and, and we do have people who are downloading these things for complaint cases or police investigations and, and things like that, and I think it's been a lifesaver in some cases, and, you know, I'll just flag like the the transcript itself, it can be helpful there, but again, you can't have transcription errors. It's, it's actually really the audio recording, like that is the, the underlying kind of Hard to argue against point of truth, right?
So, and, and I think if, if, you know, there's an audio recording of you in the room telling the client about the, you know, the risk of adverse effects or offering alternative, prescription options and things like that. It's pretty hard to argue about that if you can produce that audio clip. And, you know, the, the flip side of that is obviously, you know, you do want to make sure you're asking for consent when you're doing these recordings.
And I, I think, you know, there's, there's different ways you can go about that. Like there's, there's signage and consent forms, but honestly, for me, my, my advice is always like, if you're going to record with somebody, you turn the recording device on first. And then say, hey, you know, I have a recording device.
It's going to help me write notes, it's going to help me produce, you know, summary documents for you. Are you OK with that? And more and more, I, I, I think most clients are OK with that because, you know, their physician or their psychologist might be doing the same thing, and, and, you know, there is some understanding that, you know, you're coming to a, a Veterinary clinic, a, a medical institution of sorts, there's some expectation that the, the interactions going to be documented.
So going from, you know, paper or digital documentation to an audio recording is not that big a leap, but obviously very important to have that, that consent recorded. Yeah, no, of course, but it's much better in that, you know, I've certainly been at doctors and the. They have their back turned to me and they're they're typing on the computer, you know there's sort of interaction between patient and and doctor or client and vet or whatever so I I think it just improves the whole process.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think I, I mean, I know a lot of people are, are after an experience with a, a really good vet, you know, somebody who, who is not just good at the medicine, but is good in terms of the communication skills. Like there's often the remark like, hey, I wish my physician, you know, would give me the same level of service that, that you've just given me and my pet.
And I, I think using a, a, a tool like. That kind of takes that to the next level, cause like you said, now, you can sit and face the person face to face and, and talk eye to eye as opposed to having your back turned and having to furiously type as you're going. You're, you're also probably just a little bit more mentally present because your, your backload of previous appointments is, is probably, less than it, it would have been in the past.
And, you know, another kind of side effect that, that we've noticed is You know, when, when you use an AI tool, you do develop some soft skills, right? Like there is a way to speak in the room that actually helps generate better AI records. And, you know, when I, I talked to vets, like it's, it's not my place to tell you how to speak to your clients, but I, I think You know, people do figure out that to get the, the AI record to look as good as they want, they, they need to verbalise things, right?
Like the, the AI you, you, you need to remember is working just off of a, a transcript, right? It's, it's written words, and it doesn't have some of the extra context that you as the human being in the room has, right? Like, if you say like, oh, it's this leg and you're somebody's pointing at a leg, like, It doesn't know what leg you, you need to say, OK, OK.
So it's, it's the left hind leg that you're, you're pointing at or you're talking about, and it becomes very second nature to, to start to do that. But one thing that a lot of vets have commented on is like they kind of learn to, to speak in this way, and their, their clients sometimes comment on it. It's like, hey, you've explained that really well to me, and, and the vet is doing it in part because they want it on the record, but I, I think the client benefits as well, and that there's just you know, a more well-rounded, complete discussion happening in the room.
So it's kind of a, a fringe benefit that we've noticed as well. Yeah I think these soft skills are, and I know people don't like that word but I'm gonna use it anyway, the soft skills are so important and I suppose also it helps us as vets to also behave one with clients and with nurses in the room that we're not going to get angry or sarcastic or whatever which can also happen, can't it, so I suppose to finally, finally finish off Mike, I'm gonna say what what's the juicy gossip now. For COVID, what can you reveal, what's the future holding, for COVID that you can tell us about and you won't get into trouble?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so I, I don't think I'll get into trouble, but I, I mean it's relevant to a couple of the things we're, we're talking about like in, in terms of, What we're really focused on for 2026. So 11 thing is, is kind of being more present in Europe, right? Like we, we started in North America, but I, I think we've set ourselves up well to, to have our software work in a number of different languages, and, and that's actually fairly challenging to do.
But, you know, by virtue of hiring veterinarians as like the key team member in each and every language and region we go into, we've, we've done well there. But You know, I, I, I think a couple of the, the features I am most excited about. So we, we are going further in terms of the client communication piece, right?
And, you know, our, our goal always has been and, and remains helping veterinary professionals, but if, if we can help you guys help your own clients, it, it comes back to you in a number of ways, right? More return business, happier clients at the end of the visits, that kind of stuff. So, you know, already we can produce.
You know, emails and, and visit summaries. One of the, the more recent features that we've rolled out is, is, we do incorporate client handouts from vet lexicon. So, I, I'm not sure if you're familiar with Vet Lexicon.
It's a, a, a UK website, that produces kind of expert reviewed veterinary handouts and You know, what COVID does is it kind of listens to the, the subjects being described, and it says, hey, it looks like, you know, these 4 handouts could help you, and all you have to do is click to attach and, and kind of with regards to the CMA like some of those handouts are with regards to prescription medication. So it, it, it kind of makes it easier to provide clients with the, the required information. But, you know, there's, there's, I think, a lot further we can go in, in that regard.
So there are some things we're, we're kind of working on that will You know, allow clients, like there's, there's a lot of stuff that, that gets discussed in the room with the veterinarian, and I, I think even with the best communicators, the client doesn't absorb all of that information, right? Like I, I think it's just human nature. You need to hear things more than once to, to really have it sink in.
And that doesn't even factor in that, you know, the person in the room is, they're probably stressed out, right? Like their, their pet is sick, maybe they, they need to rush out of the clinic and, and go pick up their kid after school and they're short on time or, or who knows what else. Like there's always something going on, but You know, the, the kind of AI that we leverage for, for veterinarians and creating these medical documents, like we, we intend to extend that to the clients as well.
Like, that's, I think, the big place where we're going, and, and obviously we need to do it in a, a safe way, and, and, we will only ever provide information that the veterinarian has kind of discussed and approved. It's, it's not going to be the same thing as the client going home and, you know, asking Chat GPT like, hey, what's the diagnosis for my cat? That is a little different.
But What our hope is, is that we can actually become better than chat GBT in that regard because it, it will basically be an interface where the client can ask information that was specifically discussed with their veterinarian. So it's basically, you know, reformatting, rewording some of the discussion from the room in a, a very client friendly way and, and in a way they can do that safely in their own time, like their own time in the comfort of their own home as many times as they want. So that's.
That's kind of the big thing that we're working on right now and, and there'll be more coming out about that in the near future. Brilliant, so that's really, you know, we could talk about your, your cat as a mixture mixurian problem, you know that means nothing, whereas your cat's not weeing properly or peeing or I was using the appropriate language for the client which isn't. Condescending or patronising, it's just communicating at the right level, because they're usually medical professionals.
Yeah, and I mean like AI has this uncanny ability to explain things really well, like it it can take very complicated. Ideas and and distil it down in a way that is easy to understand. And again, I, I use that in my own work, whether it's, you know, distilling some complicated computer science project or or home improvement project or something like that, and I, I think it's, again, that, that is kind of the, the, the real asset of, of AI.
That's kind of where it, it, it shines and again, we're looking to, to leverage that to help vets already, but now to help their clients moving forward more and more, so. Mike, fantastic, thank you so much for your time, it's been really interesting for me, I'm sure it has been for people listening in as well. Thank you also for partnering with us on the AI month, which we kind of want to include cybersecurity because we think those two areas are such important areas for vets and the vet practise to know about, it is.
You know before the pandemic I was talking about businesses needed to be digital businesses, they needed to use digital tools like Facebook, like appointment er schedulers and all those things. Since the pandemic and obviously with the advent you know of AI out to the to the general public you know much more widely, er it just becomes more and more important doesn't it? Yeah, no, absolutely, and, and, again, we're, we're happy to, to partner and I appreciate you having me on here as well.
But yeah, our, our lives are increasingly digital, so it's, I, I think, you know, we're, we're kind of seeing the trend that, that You know, the, the early adopters are already using AI technology, and now we're kind of into the, the early majority, and, soon, shortly after that, the, the rest of the majority will follow, but it, it's less and less a question of like, will you implement AI in your practise? It's more about like, when, when are you going to get there and who are you going to partner with, that kind of thing. So, you're right, all of those questions are extremely relevant and, and, yeah, we're happy to talk about them anytime.
Thank you Mike, thanks so much and thank you everyone for listening, we hope to see you on a podcast or a webinar very soon. I hope you have a great rest of the.
