Ahead Of The Curve
Sweden has one of the world’s most advanced digital economies. It follows that veterinary care needs to use available technologies to offer the kind of quick, responsive and personalised services that customers now expect from every kind of business.
That’s why Evidensia Sweden is investing in digital technologies as a way to help its staff work more efficiently, to improve business processes, and to serve both customers and patients.
Thanks to recent investment, most of Evidensia’s clinics and hospitals now use Provet Cloud, a practice management system, or journal system as it’s called in Scandinavia. In addition, the company has been rolling out a digital X-ray archiving system so that it’s quick and simple to get a second opinion from an expert colleague in a different location. We have also introduced a company intranet where staff can connect to share knowledge and debate issues.
A common theme with all of these initiatives is the idea of linking colleagues so they can have access to the same data. But sharing isn’t confined to staff and internal processes. There’s also been investment in a new Digital Centre. Here, staff are developing an online pet healthcare guide where owners can access information on symptoms and diseases, an online pharmacy and ecommerce site, and even an online consultation service, where customers can book an appointment to consult with a veterinarian via smartphone video.
With these kinds of developments, says Project Manager Daniel Collby, “We are leaping ahead of many other business sectors. You cannot drive this any quicker than we are already doing.” Collby has achieved this by getting projects up and running quickly, rather than spending a long time planning and overanalysing what might be possible.
EXPONENTIAL IMPROVEMENTS
Taken together, the rapid rollout of these digital projects has the potential to be transformative, particularly as it gives Evidensia access to rich data that can be analysed to help improve care. Complication reporting, for example, can be done directly through Provet Cloud.
“We can analyse data and see if certain complications tend to occur in certain regions or at certain times of the day, so it can be used for improving quality.” Johan Wiklund – Country Manager, Evidensia Sweden
Many of these techniques and technologies draw on human medicine, where they’ve been tried and tested. This holds out the potential for exponential improvements in animal care. “We’ve picked a time in history where we’re going to take this giant leap in what we can do,” says Wiklund, “it’s like going from no phone to iPhone!”