Curbside veterinary care solutions - While veterinary services were considered essential during the pandemic, significant modifications to the traditional service model were necessary to ensure the safety of clients and staff. Most hospitals had to quickly develop protocols for curbside service, to limit potential viral transmission in waiting and exam rooms. In most cases, patient care happens in a treatment room in the absence of the pet owner. From the client's perspective, curbside service may provide some advantage, since most pets are more comfortable in their owner's car. Most veterinary practices are not optimized to provide curbside care and the resulting inefficiencies have created additional stress on practices already dealing with staffing shortages and burnout.

The world of animal sheltering has transformed significantly over the past decade with shelters taking on more than simply being locations to house animals and (hopefully) adopt them out. In the past, shelters began seeking lifesaving options only after animals entered their facilities. Now, they focus on what can be done to prevent animals from coming into the shelter at all. In short, shelters "animal resource centers” in their communities. They might help pet owners who need assistance with food, provide some forms of vet care, lend a hand to fix a broken fence, even give help with a pet deposit for an apartment. However, shelter management software wasn’t built for these sorts of things … Can you help?

The Problem: Shelter management software platforms tend to be built with the idea of intake in mind. Shelters who want to provide these “intake prevention” sorts of services do not have a good tool to manage all these cases; they resort to spreadsheets (or worse!)

Background: A cow’s production life is defined as a series of lactations, which are generally about a year long. Once she calves, she begins producing milk (the start of the lactation), and will continued to be milked until about 60 days before she is due to have her next calf. Ideally, this calf-to-calf cycle takes about a year. Sixty days prior to calving, she is ‘dried off’, which means we stop harvesting milk and allow her to have a period of rest before the next calf. These ‘dry’ cows are usually housed in a separate area or facility on the farm and fed separate rations.

At dry off, cows will generally be vaccinated and, depending on the farm or the history of the individual cow, receive an infusion of antibiotic into each quarter, followed by an inert bismuth based teat sealant. Cows that have had a mastitis event in the previous lactation or have a subclinical infection at dry-off usually receive antibiotic and teat sealant in each quarter; cows that have no history of mastitis and no evidence of a subclinical infection received only teat sealant.

Drying off a cow is a two-step process. She is milked a final time, teat ends are cleaned with an alcohol swab, and the antibiotic is infused, teat ends are then cleaned again and the teat sealant infused. Despite every attempt to make sure this is done in as hygienic a manner is possible, the reality is that there is risk of teat, hand or syringe contamination with manure and bacteria. Every time we cross a teat end with a syringe, we risk introducing bacteria and creating an iatrogenic infection. For cows that receive both an antibiotic and a teat sealant, we have to cross the teat end twice and so we double the risk.

Traditionally, patient medical records are stored locally at the hospital in which the patient visits their veterinarian. This creates challenges across patient care and data analytics, not to mention is environmentally unfriendly (fax is still a primary method of
record transfer). Patients that see multiple veterinarians (e.g. general practitioner and specialist) or need to visit the emergency room in the middle of the night, are at a disadvantage in that the ER or specialist may not have access to their records which can lead to misdiagnoses or possible drug interactions. Additionally, without extensive access to patient and hospital data, broad industry trends and insights are difficult to identify.

Correct common cat behavior problems so they can be better housemates - Remote Monitoring and Interactive Technologies for the Management of Inappropriate Feline Behavior: Inappropriate behavior(soiling outside of the litter box, aggression, and destruction of property) is a common issue in feline husbandry. Studies and anecdotal evidence suggest that these behaviors can become rationales for relinquishment of cats to humane shelters. Successful intervention in inappropriate feline behaviors is expected to decrease the likelihood of relinquishment of cats to shelters. Monitoring of feline behavior and appropriate and timely intervention when these behaviors occur is vital to their appropriate management, and this monitoring can become difficult when owners are not present in the home.

Use technology and engage the public in assessing and tracking feral cat populations - Feral cats are a considerable problem from both the veterinary medical and public health perspectives. Feral cats are at risk for a variety of health problems, and they can serve as vectors of zoonotic diseases and have significant ecological impacts on native avian, mammalian, and reptilian species. One obstacle in feral cat management is the lack of a reliable consensus estimate of feral cat populations, and of a means by which changes in this population can be tracked on a large scale in real time. Citizen science is a powerful tool that has been fostered by advances in consumer imaging (i.e. smart phone cameras), computing, and web-based interconnectedness.

Create an effective solution to house train dogs - House training a dog can be a very frustrating experience for an owner. Some breeds are especially difficult to house train and continue to be a challenge even as an adult. Owners may be less likely to adopt a rescue dog that has not been appropriately house trained as a puppy. The training process can be more complicated for working owners with irregular schedules and those who live in high-rise housing without easy access to the outdoors. House soiling can quickly test the patience of even the most committed owner and, if left unchecked, this behavior can cause significant damage at great expense. Many of these otherwise great companions will be surrendered to a shelter and face an uncertain future.

Many small farmers do not have a specialized commercial recordkeeping software to keep track of their food and fiber animals (goats, sheep, cattle, etc.). This produces a challenge to keep track of their food and fiber production animals ́ needs for regular immunizations, hoof trimming, or for recording of health events, withholding times following treatments and vaccines, births, deaths, and animals that are leaving the farm. This is particularly challenging when planning herd/flock health interventions together with the veterinarian, producing graphs of existing data, or reviewing historic data to improve herd/flock health.

Small and large farms, organic and conventional, dairy and beef, all vaccinate their cows to prevent disease. Vaccinations are often administered to large groups of animals at the same time for the sake of labor efficiency and reduction of animal stress, and a common method of administration involves the use of a repeat-dosing syringes to give the vaccine. When cows are being vaccinated in quick succession, needles used to administer vaccines are not always changed between animals. This increases the risk of transferring diseases between cows and affects injection site sterility and beef quality. The challenge is that no method exists that can be used to repeatedly administer vaccines throughout a group of cows while maintaining appropriate sterility and injection technique.