Telehealth

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- The Practice Owner’s Guide to Online Veterinary Prescriptions

Shawn Wilkie: Hey you’re listening to the veterinary Innovation podcast you’re listening to the veterinary Innovation podcast my name is Shawn Wilkie and I’m happy to be here today with my brilliant co-host Ivan Zak why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself rest

Meet our guest – Jamie Moodie of Vetsdirect

Ivan Zak: All right well you kind of did that already so Ivan and we have Jamie Moodie today. Jamie is the owner and managing director of bets direct which is also known as a bit phone and it is the largest UK Veterinary Telehealth provider as well as has presence in overseas he’s also director of an investment fund and we’re happy to have you here Jamie.

Jamie Moodie: Thank you very much for hosting me

Shawn Wilkie: Yeah it’s awesome so Jamie it’s a really interesting to be connecting on the podcast I guess the last time in the first time we met each other was at the North American Veterinary conference called DMX now still remember that we had a great dinner there with Randy from Life learn and all kinds of really interesting kind of conversations over dinner that was probably over a year ago now pretty pretty amazing how quickly time goes by yeah well it was only wish this podcast could be over speakers well

Shawn Wilkie: Yeah it totally hey and it’s been really fun we’ve been I think we’re on their seventh episode seventh episode of the podcast now so really excited to have you join us one of the reasons that we wanted to have you on the show is you know so far all of our guests have been North american-based either companies or CEOs or even veterinarians that have been doing interesting things but we thought we might take a little bit of a more International turn with our podcast and get some perspective from over across the water I always say that in Halifax where the closest city to the other Halifax which is over in the UK and we’re a direct flight over there so it’s pretty cool

Jamie Moodie: Well thank you for inviting me

Shawn Wilkie: Jamie can you tell us a little bit more about what that direct limited does and who your customers are what problems you solve

Veterinary telehealth

Jamie Moodie: Of course very happy to so in a nutshell that’s direct is Telehealth platform and it provides free our support and advice to pet owners throughout the world using a team of him working vet nurses and veterinarian so we deal with all sorts of questions from pet owners from you know my dogs being sick what do I do Kathy whines what become a bigger Charities and okay we’re also starting to work with Veterinary practice which is I think a really interesting angle because I think that is where telemedicine is going to go in the future

Ivan Zak: That’s excellent very interesting I have tons of questions about telemedicine Telehealth very hot topic but just before we get there how did you get into the veterinary field and what inspired you to start in our domain and and led to specifically to the vet phone and the Vets direct the really interesting question is I’ll give you a brief potted history because I don’t want anyone to fall asleep but I actually started out as an accountant don’t throw nothing and will got over that then I moved into private equity which I found really really interesting so basically My remix there was to invest in fourth Legion companies mainly in the UK and I got to see in a very short period of time in 400 all different business models meet 400 on successful teams quickly learned how to recognize a great business and a great model but I always wanted to run my own thing and roll the sleeves up and so I left that job raise some money and stuff to look for industries that really interested me and I suppose that’s what brought me to that’s correct is that industry has always interested me on both a personal and a professional level you know firstly I love animals and I think if I could have my time again I probably retrain as veterinarian but from a professional perspective I just felt the industry was ripe for disruption you know you could see it happening in human health you could see it happening you know laughs ways of other Industries and I always thought that at the time that the industry was a little bit behind and it was really good to see this is really fast catching up now and at that point I stumbled across fetch director immediately fell in love with it I suppose it was a business that satisfied all stakeholders you know for example that Marion’s and nurses could work flexibly from home pet owners could get convenience and trusted advice and maybe cost savings on occasion business customers got improved an improved value perception and actually help Venturi practices because we took away some of the straightforward cases that could be solved remotely and allow them time to focus on the more complex issues in practice so that’s sort of how I got to that direct

Ivan Zak: It’s fantastic I think that the the interesting questions about Telehealth and telemedicine is always sort of on the legal side of things how do you guys deal in the UK and how does it work for you across the borders into other countries in terms of regulations and different jurisdictions and the distinction between the Telehealth and telemedicine and I’m also going to load it on top with how do you control and differentiate prescribing diagnosing or advising to see veterinarian over the phone because those are sort of the hot topics of the area

Jamie Moodie: Okay class you questions in there I’ve been so high let me pick them off if I forget anything remind me please but I suppose the first thing to point out is that straight to be going for almost 60 years now dealing with a hundred thousand consultations the year and our focus our entire Focus has always been on safety and consistency so in over a million consultations its Inception we’ve never given advice led to the death of an animal and the reason for that is we are incredibly rigorous with Craig you are in the world and telemedicine is diagnosis and prescription and those elements are highly regulated so how we avoid falling foul of any regulation is we don’t cross into diagnosis and prescription okay also answers your second question around cross-border because we’re not straying into diagnosis and prescription we therefore don’t have the cross-border issues

Ivan Zak: So you have the Professionals in the industry the veterinarians and the nurses by the way for the North American listeners nurses and technicians are the same you hired those licensed or previously licensed professionals so you get the professional advice but then you’re giving the advice to the degree where it’s advisory not prescriptive or diagnosing anything is that do I understand correctly

Jamie Moodie: That is exactly it so generally the end of a cold you can have one of four outcomes from our team on that page basis it’s this is a minor issue here’s some advice to deal with it at home flatpoint one outcome to the situation of we’ll call you back in a couple of hours so it’s call back option three is you do need treatment here but we would like you to go and see your vet during normal working hours so if it’s 2 a.m. in the morning don’t rush to the emergency provider just go back to your practice the next day and then the final one is no this is really serious to seek typical treatment as soon as possible and by keeping to those four outcomes we make sure that the pet and the pet her do the right thing on every occasion

Ivan Zak: That’s fantastic on this side of the actual technology so it sounds like you started with the phone and currently there’s a lot of telemedicine platforms that erupted and you know I don’t know where’s the place for those and whether they are you know there’s different models people are trying to connect the owner with a vet clinic I don’t know if there is already a third party that do just what you do where they engage Visionaries and nurses to do do it the telemedicine so can you speak a little bit about that development and how that competes with your model and can

Shawn Wilkie: I just append to that and say also who are your competitors and why are you better than them

Jamie Moodie: Well okay so I’ll start with that question till who are a competitive so the biggest one in the u.s. Is Wesker docks and the one in the UK is poor squat why do I think we’re better than them I suppose the first point is our focus is entirely on as I said before a quality and consistency every is bit of advice we give is clinical protocol back it’s reviewed we’ve got an incredibly robust monitoring system so I would say the consistency in quality of advice is superior I don’t think many people can lecture our monitoring regime so that’s point one would be doing it a number of years 60 years to be exact and that means that we bring a lot of experience with people we’ve made mistakes along the way but corrected them so we’re constantly improving and I think the final thing is our view Vector X you is that telemedicine and Telehealth providers should work in conjunction with Veterinary practices and so I think some people acting just a melee attack platform so that me practices can do it themselves and I think you know you’re going to see a huge number of those that have platforms rising up in the next couple years and then probably folding in due course while the industry works out what it’s really aiming for I think from my perspective Telehealth and telemedicine should be used to augment physical treatment so I don’t think it should be competitive to Veterinary practices where I see the future of Telehealth and telemedicine is acting as a digital front door to Veterinary practices and I think that’s where our system is somewhat unique we are we have a system that allows Veterinary practices to use our system but if they don’t have the team to fill those consultations at that point we can use our highly scalable pin to help fulfill those consultations on their behalf so the pattern is always come to the practice but we just help them serve as their customers

Ivan Zak: Very interesting and I guess the question then on the back of that is what does the business model look like so it sounds like you’re pretty significant lead generation for the veterinarians and that’s how it works in conjunction with them and I know they didn’t you call the insurance industry is quite evolved not as much in North America so is this the model where you’re collaborating with the insurance companies and how does the whole equation Works who is the core customer I mean it is pets and pet owners but but how does the whole system actually turning business

Jamie Moodie: the really good question again I think this is one that will see change over the next couple of years but our Quarry to Market is through business customers so in the UK as an example the vast majority of our customers our insurers or Charities so as part of your insurance policy you get access to our service for free so as you say the end customers always the pet the pet owner but it’s the insurance customer that pays for it because differentiates a proposition you know if animals don’t need to go to an emergency provider out of hours then they don’t and that saves on the bit of cash pattern a wins because they’ve got convenient just advice and I suppose we benefit because we’re 24/7 we can help all those people where I think it will change is the insurance industry is starting to recognize that it needs to work in conjunction with event re industry and so I suppose what we might see in the next few years is US continuing to work with insurers but also starting to work with that reap actors as well so it doesn’t matter where you’re calling from whether you’re insured or not insured I’m always diverting where necessary you back to your own Veterinary practice does that answer the question

Ivan Zak: yeah absolutely I think that makes it very interesting because I kind of proved in that direction but I think that’s more of a future look as I’m hearing and because right now if it’s insurance that is advising and I can see why they’re trying to save the cost on the actual visits are advising to get the consultancy with you so that’s sort of a sweet spot there but I think that you’re absolutely right for the veterinarian’s this is a lead generation and then your precursor that actually directs the right client into the door so I think that your product in your organization actually filling that need where they can address the questions that are maybe not of a serious need to actually go to the veterinarian and everybody wins and kitchen areas are much rather to get an appointment that has a serious condition rather than to come in charge them for appointment and then say yeah everything is fine you don’t have to be here you know my experience in the in the industries and the emergency hospital and you’ve seen many people that come in you know after hours it’s ten you know p.m. midnight they come in pay you know $150 for visiting you just say yep everything’s fine just go home and they get really frustrated and that discourage them for the next time so I think what you’re doing is exceptional

Jamie Moodie: I’ve not yet I really agree with you there I think I can’t be at it further I think I could absolutely do like an insurance fees are absolutely delighted to pay the cost of treatment when it’s necessary I think as you say the friction is paying for something they don’t need and also that there is don’t like selling something that people don’t need so I so I think what we’re trying to do is what with practices work with industry to lower the entry cost of that make are you

Remote work

Shawn Wilkie: My last tech startup we had a bunch of young people start with us and I said to one of them I said yeah we’re pretty traditional business we go to the office from 9 o’clock til 5 o’clock every day and we work together and knowing both of you and knowing both of you I’ve been knowing your previous business quite well smart flow and Jamie knowing how you work as a team I’d like to talk about remote work is really interesting you know it’s I think it’s an Innovative new approach you know it doesn’t necessarily fit into every Veterinary practice although we had Frank on a couple of episodes ago and he has a Veterinary Clinic and he had a receptionist said he just wouldn’t let go and she moved thousands of miles away and is still the receptionist so let’s talk a little bit about remote work the challenges how it’s worked for you and just any insight that you have and then I’ve and I know for sure you’re going to double back on this and have something to add and I’m just going to sit back and listen boy go ahead

Jamie Moodie: I absolutely love it I think it’s not without its challenges I think you know culture and feeling part of a team that is something you need to work out really really hard because it’s not like you can just wander over to their desk in my partner back go you know you’re doing a great job this is fantastic I think regular communication team events all those sorts of things have to be focused on if you want to retain your culture as a remote working organization

Ivan Zak: That’s very interesting so is Sean mentioned we build is 65 people team at how many on your and it was a hundred percent remote we never had an office never since Inception to exit the culture is one of those things when you go beyond sort of 25 30 people you really need to instill that and that’s the glue that will keep you together also technology helps a lot to basically have those social channels and communication we use something like slack to have not just the business related exchanges but the personal events just joking around and things like that but the but the direction where I wanted to maybe ask you a little bit more about right now the big problem that we see in the veterinarian serious shortage of veterinarians we definitely don’t have shortage of pets and the customers shortage of veterinarians is is a big concern so I think that again what you’re doing is kind of serving the need of qualifying the customer that comes in to actually use our professional time to help them but also the problem is coming from you know as people coin these people Millennials and I think I kind of qualify the end of it and it’s really about how people consume information and how impatient they are in their careers and I’m very concerned about bitch near Korea because we spent you know eight to twelve years if you’re specialize in becoming a veterinarian and most of my classmates burned out after 10 years of working and I think it’s in inability to construct your own lifestyle so that’s sort of a lone premise to question if I am a veterinarian and I’m thinking to change which there is a lot of those vets and I think that you have a big pool of that could join that could join your team how would I be my day how does the work look like as a veterinarian can I construct my work life balance by working through sort of over the phone and then regulate my schedule because it’s a 24/7 service and what sort of feedback you’re getting from your professional staff

Jamie Moodie: Yep happy to hear about that one I suppose to have we got it right you can the data you know we’ve got a full right at the moment we don’t need any more people but we are growing so we’ll be recruiting into course but without any advertising whatsoever we’re getting 50 to 60 unsolicited see these every month people want to do this and I think part of the reason for that is it is that flexibility point is that ability to construct a healthy work-life balance I think so for example what does an average day look like that’s direct very much dependent on your seniority and the times you available to work but you know we’ve got some people that work almost like a nine-to-five they do 40 hours a week we’ve got some that do 10 hours a week they only want to do it in the evenings on Monday or Wednesday or Thursday so how we tend to do it is pick down as that you want provided it also works for us you’re going to have to give us one or two hours which might not be the most Pleasant so you know at night or a couple of hours on the weekend but we treat that ratio very low so that people can have a work-life balance does that answer the question

Ivan Zak: Yeah yeah absolutely and that kind of brings an interesting thought that I had there’s another startup that we want to injure you here but they’re building a platform that connects the Locum veterinarian to the and it’s interesting that might be an interesting pool for your organization to dip into these clinicians they don’t have to really quit what they’re doing but maybe they’re doing some in-person appointments and working couple days a week and maybe they can be those sort of on call or or on schedule but work from home as well so that that really opens up its separate nation different direction for richness which I love because this is something that’s happening as you can tell I’m doing a podcast not doing a surgery at the moment just because of that I got burned out with the emergency and then stepped into technology and and I think that finding the path and considering the biggest issue in our industry the suicide rate that is you know we surpass dentist different direction to veterinarians I think that’s a very interesting mission to accomplish and to show them how else you can utilize your knowledge without burning out or God forbid going into the direction of a suicide

Jamie Moodie: Absolutely I mean wouldn’t it be be great that we did great that we didn’t have so many veterinarians after all that hard work leaving the industry and actually felt they had enough diversity and time in their job to really enjoy it you know that’s why I’m so Keen for Telehealth and telemedicine to work in partnership with industry so okay next week your hands on in practice but the week after you’re doing remote Consulting for us this and that flexibility gives them that work-life balance I think it’s absolutely key for the future of the industry

Ivan Zak: Yeah for example from somewhere from the forest in your motor home like Sean is doing this podcast today when that’d be fantastic

Shawn Wilkie: You forgot to mention that I’m also under a blanket Ivan okay well that’s I thought that that would be a too much detail for the listeners but yeah from under the blanket and ice cream and a little bit of context the reason why I’m under a blanket just do dampen the noise not not for any other unforeseen reasons all they were here so I went to a podcast podcast camp and found out that if you want to have high quality audio you’ve got to get rid of the Ambient sound around you and that’s how you do it so Ivan Zak’s got a much more professional setup he’s got to sound dampening panels on the roof of his office so he’s all set but I am in a motor home in the middle of the forest you gotta do what you gotta do to record a podcast when you’re away from the office

Ivan Zak: I told you you should get along with your life not to get in this situation this is pretty fun

Shawn Wilkie: It’s all true the did you did help me that on this weekend actually one of the things that I can’t help but want to ask and it kind of Builds on our conversation that we had in Florida Jamie has where are you at with your technology stack you know what tools are you using how did the rebuild of your platform go and what’s new technology wise and how does all the tech work together how do you make it so that you can be efficient and listen to the number of patients or cases that you do every day is pick

Jamie Moodie: He’s picking highly reliable providers so telephony provider if telephones where you want to go or you know decent live chat Hub so from our perspective actually those Technologies quite simple Sean it’s in the Microsoft text back really you know what we every single time we have a consultation is one can oppress and get in touch with a solution phone live chat voice it’s video and those are you know he’s third party for all of those and also use those clinical protocols I was talking about previously so we’ve automated them as they stand alone and they’re in the.net framework other than that really this is not too much Tech around it I think where I really want to take it is sort of down the mobile app fruit I think to kind of reacted conversation my petzel to our proactive conversation you’ve not had your vaccinations this month’s you want to go on and sort that I think that is where Tech could really help us

Shawn Wilkie: It’s really cool Jimmy really interesting to know and you know the question that comes to my mind is you know you’re the director of this investment fund are you investing in other Veterinary technology startups and what’s interesting to you from an investment perspective the answers

Jamie Moodie: The answers’ im always looking for the next investment it’s a very happy to serve look at startups or you know businesses are already going at the moment I suppose what interests me is I think there’s a couple of challenges that we need to fix in the industry before telemedicine and actually industry in general can really advance and that is data flow I think and qualitative data sharing between you know see my organization Veterinary practice being able to integrate into PMS systems I think that is absolutely key so I’m quite interested in anyone that can crack that nut

Shawn Wilkie: It’s interesting that you brought that up Ivan do you have anything to say about that

Ivan Zak: Yeah and well that’s sort of exactly what I was thinking after I left smart flow within the its infrastructure the one thing that I noticed throughout technology and large companies is that there’s a lot of good applications but none of them connect and then when you’re trying to articulate your vision on your product to vegetarian then it all makes good sense and you can make a sale but then when you get to actual integration then it doesn’t work the way they expect it so I think that the challenge on the market and the in the industry right now is availability of a common channels or apis where you can plug everything in so it delivers one unified solution across the entire portfolio and that’s I think that sort of the direction that you’re going with that is the problem

Jamie Moodie: Yeah I think it’s time to fix it yeah tell if your business idea Ivan well that but that’s sort of what it is

Ivan Zak: I think that that’s what needs to happen and someone needs to harness the startups and the connectivity and it has to start from see the challenge that I see is that large companies have ability to acquire products and they buy them and then they add them to a stack but they don’t integrate them well and then also you can’t have all the solutions and then they become a very proprietary Network in a closed system where they can’t connect anything else and then the whole degree of monetization that they’re trying I think that the business model doesn’t work that well either so I think that overall all the solution to that is someone stepping up and building in sort of an open source bus where everything can plug into

Shawn Wilkie: It’s really interesting because you know people look at technology as a competitive Advantage you know it’s the old way of looking at software it’s like let’s build it for ourselves let’s make it a closed loop and then let’s buy other things and added to it where you know if you look at other Industries you look at companies like Google and how they open source the majority of their code and let other people build on top of it it’s a different world and Jamie it goes back to what you were saying about the veterinary industry before it definitely is a little bit behind other industries that we all know and there’s definitely room for ketchup and I think there’s much more room for more openness and sharing and and things like open source software and open source data I think it will change veterinary medicine for the better but I think a lot of the large companies and even the small ones are of that scared of that I think everybody’s still thinking of The Limited Pie as opposed to there’s enough for everyone

Jamie Moodie: Yeah school so many problems I mean just for example making it slightly more personal you know when one of my customers calls I want them to be able to recognize the number oh that’s this person is a medical record for their pattern and so we can get better advice whatever we say you know you need to go and see the vet that’s automatically ping to the veterinary practice because you see it’s got me pi Link in the data’s is better we can provide better decisions and also we can sort of provide owner with what they need I just I just think it’s absolutely critical

Ivan Zak: Absolutely I think that that’s well overdue there’s there’s also evolutionary process and I think that you know several applications that are heading in that direction competitors took a stab at it items did as well with event date and data point projects but I think we’re about to see some of these more significant models of rupt where things will start connecting into there’s a significant need we know that it’s there and it’s just a matter of people gathering around the the initiative and executing on it.

Shawn Wilkie: Ivan and I both had exits last year, and here you talk about that Jamie and know all of the conversations that I’ve had with Ivan you know we’re both looking for the next thing and it’s really interesting to hear you both have a similar idea you know and no one’s doing this right now and I think that there’s a massive opportunity for data sharing for sure

Jamie Moodie: Well you know if you find the right solution I’ll back it.