Anna's 8th Post

One of my favorite articles we've read for the class was "Medivet: The Veterinary Partnership." I think I particularly connected with this one because I love animals so much and I think this is a great way to apply information systems and technology. The subject of the article, Medivet, is a veterinary clinic in Europe. Once an animal is registered with them, they can go to any Medivet location.

This makes Medivet very convenient, because veterinary emergencies aren't planned, and the most important thing is getting the pet under medical care as soon as possible. However this convenience has presented a problem. If the animal isn't seen at its regular clinic, then their information isn't available. This includes insurance and vaccination and medical history.

Medivet worked with Microsoft to solve this problem. They used data management software to compile all of the information into one database, so that it is accessible from any branch. This will no doubt save many animals lives. The most surprising thing to me was that this software wasn't already installed, especially because the article talks about using the information in medical practices for humans. I just assumed it existed already, but I was wrong, so I'm very happy it does now! I'm glad that society is using information systems to benefit animals and not just humans!

Medivet-10th blog

In class we discussed Medivet and talked a little about what it was. Just for anybody who wasn't there, Medivet is a veterinary health care system in the UK. We talked about the positives and negatives to the sytem and what it would take for this to be successful. After talking about this as a class I thought it would be something interesting to look deeper into.

Now that we know what it is and what they do, I found some pretty cool things on their website that was not brought up in our class discussion. In 1991, they established a 24 hour service in Hendon. This is an emergency center for all pets that is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It doesn't matter what time of day or even if it's a holiday. They are always their for you and your pet and are committed to providing your animal with the best service possible. This idea has been so successful over the years that they opened up five more emergency centers in cities around the UK. They offer appointments around the clock day or night. There is a staff that they have specifically set to take phone calls so that nobody's call will be missed. You will not get an answering machine because they are on top of all the incoming calls and will help to the best of their abilities. These are just some of the main points that they offer that I found on their site.

I think this is a great system to have because if someones pet is in need of attention concerning their health, they are going to be there for you. They don't miss a beat and take any days off, no matter what time of the day or year, you can always go to the emergency care center. Now, I'm not too familiar with the vetenarian systems here in the US, just because I have not really had to use them myself but if we don't already have something like this, I think it would be a good idea to think about possibly getting some kind of system like this.