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Vet practice management software (Saas) is a pretty competitive field already. If you think about it, if someone has built a platform for traditional MD / GP pr

Vet practice management software (Saas) is a pretty competitive field already. If you think about it, if someone has built a platform for traditional MD / GP practices, it's fairly trivial to turn around and also offer it to vets. The bigger challenge is probably getting them to switch off their legacy paper systems.

snapetom 9y ago
Hardly anyone is paper anymore. There's a lot of vet management software, but really only two that matter - Cornerstone and IDEXX. All the vet schools use one or the other, and so do the vast majority of large vet clinics and corporations where young vets get their first jobs. If they ever start their own practice, they've already gotten use to Cornerstone/IDEXX, so there's no reason for them to switch. There's little demand from clients to see their records online or transfer their records electronically. Sorry, HN crowd, but that's just the way it is with non-techies. The practices that do offer it use a number of third party integration services. However, the demand is so low, those companies hardly make any money because they can't charge very much.
- vqc 9y ago
  Consolidation is also a big issue. Regional specialty hospitals are buying up local GPs. Companies like Banfield are also buying up specialty hospitals and GPs. This reduces the number of software buyers and obviates the need to "transfer files" because all the files are already within one system. We originally believed all the reasons sudosteph points out as being a good reason to enter the vet tech space. It didn't quite work out for us. Source: Previous startup helped vets/owners transfer records electronically.
- duskwuff 9y ago
  Cornerstone and IDEXX? I think you're mixing something up. Cornerstone is a product, IDEXX is the vendor. The software is almost secondary for IDEXX, though. They're primarily a national chain of veterinary labs -- bloodwork, tissue sample analysis, that sort of thing -- so they've got some pretty huge hooks into the industry.
  - projektfu 9y ago
    Correct, the "big three" are Cornerstone, Avimark and Impromed. There are already several saas solutions as well, such as Neo and countless small vendors. It's telling that the top three are all now owned by either a lab services company (Idexx owns Cornerstone, DVMax and Neo) or a major supplier (Henry Schein owns both Avimark and Impromed). These products are probably no longer seen as strong businesses on their own but rather they provide a value to the parent company from integrations. This article is spot on: http://avc.com/2014/07/the-dentist-office-software-story/ http://avc.com/2014/07/the-dentist-office-software-story/

snapetom 9y ago

Hardly anyone is paper anymore. There's a lot of vet management software, but really only two that matter - Cornerstone and IDEXX. All the vet schools use one or the other, and so do the vast majority of large vet clinics and corporations where young vets get their first jobs. If they ever start their own practice, they've already gotten use to Cornerstone/IDEXX, so there's no reason for them to switch. There's little demand from clients to see their records online or transfer their records electronically. Sorry, HN crowd, but that's just the way it is with non-techies. The practices that do offer it use a number of third party integration services. However, the demand is so low, those companies hardly make any money because they can't charge very much.

vqc 9y ago
Consolidation is also a big issue. Regional specialty hospitals are buying up local GPs. Companies like Banfield are also buying up specialty hospitals and GPs. This reduces the number of software buyers and obviates the need to "transfer files" because all the files are already within one system. We originally believed all the reasons sudosteph points out as being a good reason to enter the vet tech space. It didn't quite work out for us. Source: Previous startup helped vets/owners transfer records electronically.
duskwuff 9y ago
Cornerstone and IDEXX? I think you're mixing something up. Cornerstone is a product, IDEXX is the vendor. The software is almost secondary for IDEXX, though. They're primarily a national chain of veterinary labs -- bloodwork, tissue sample analysis, that sort of thing -- so they've got some pretty huge hooks into the industry.
- projektfu 9y ago
  Correct, the "big three" are Cornerstone, Avimark and Impromed. There are already several saas solutions as well, such as Neo and countless small vendors. It's telling that the top three are all now owned by either a lab services company (Idexx owns Cornerstone, DVMax and Neo) or a major supplier (Henry Schein owns both Avimark and Impromed). These products are probably no longer seen as strong businesses on their own but rather they provide a value to the parent company from integrations. This article is spot on: http://avc.com/2014/07/the-dentist-office-software-story/ http://avc.com/2014/07/the-dentist-office-software-story/