Four Trends Shaping the Next 10 Years of Veterinary Medicine

Telemedicine, AI, distributed care, and pet insurance will lead to transformative changes in veterinary medicine.

Pattern recognition is one of my most prized skills.

During my time at this year’s VMX conference in Orlando, the patterns coalescing into trends were everywhere. Many were featured in stunning booths and propelled by massive marketing budgets, while others were distilled from quiet conversations at receptions, dinners, and meetings. Most of these shifts are interconnected and will likely morph into even more complex patterns of change. All of these trends are set to transform how we practice. Let’s take a glimpse into how telemedicine, AI, distributed care, and pet insurance will change veterinary medicine during the next decade.

1 - Telemedicine as a diagnostic tool

It’s no secret that the veterinary profession is woefully understaffed and inefficient. A recent Idexx report found that veterinary clinics will need to increase productivity by 40% to meet demand by 2030. The only realistic way to achieve that is to embrace tools such as telemedicine.

While this may be an unpopular opinion, I see the real value of telemedicine in helping veterinarians diagnose disease. Currently, the majority of veterinary telemedicine services focus on acute care. That’s important, but telemedicine's real impact is when a veterinarian canexamine an existing pet patient virtually, respond to and use remote data from wearable devices and imaging, and diagnose, treat, and monitor a pet patient.

I laid this vision out in a series of “future” lectures for the CVC conferences (R.I.P.) ten years ago, and I’m sticking to my guns on this one. We’re already seeing this trend in human medicine, and as remote devices and AI imaging analysis improve (more on that later), it won’t be long before veterinary professionals have access to them.

The reason telemedicine is essential is that it tremendously increases efficiency. Virtually evaluating, communicating, diagnosing, and administering certain treatments provides better, faster, more personalized medical care. Limiting in-clinic visits to those patients and conditions that demand it has the potential to improve the quality of care. If you’ve been a veterinarian for any length of time, you’ve experienced the time and emotional pressures of seeing a (very) minor case (“That’s a tick, not a tumor.”) when you really need to spend more time with a more serious one (pulmonary edema, ketoacidosis, melanoma).

And before you fire off that nasty “anti-telemedicine” email to me, let’s agree that telemedicine will never replace the majority of veterinary care. I think it will be a long time before remote surgery on a client’s couch or robotic IV catheter placement is a possibility. The type of telemedicine and telemonitoring I’m describing will assist us in handling minor maladies and enhance our follow-up and follow-through care.

2 - Artificial Intelligence will augment veterinary professionals

I stopped counting the number of vendors at VMX touting AI in their offerings after about 65. No joke.

While most of these products and services were leaning into AI hype, the trend is clear that supercomputing, AI, and machine learning are transforming our lives. Heck, as I write this column, an AI-powered grammar checker pesters me with each typo. (I turned it off if you’re wondering because it disrupts my flow. I use it later.)

I’m also noticing the objections and fears surrounding AI are shrinking. In human medicine, physicians are embracing AI because they know it monitors their clinical blindspots and reads (and understands) the NEMJ paper they fell asleep to.

Regarding AI and telemedicine, we recently devoted an entire episode of our Veterinary Viewfinder podcast to the question of how AI will potentially leapfrog current acute care telemedicine and how AI is and will continue to augment veterinary care.

Soon, AI will constantly monitor information from pet wearables, owner-provided images, and other inputs and recognize abstract patterns that put me (and other humans) to shame. In human medicine, many radiographs, ultrasounds, and pathology samples are screened by AI services and alert physicians to potential problems for a closer look. AI is spotting incredibly subtle changes in blood glucose from continuous glucose monitoring devices (CGMs) to helpavoid diabetic complications. Previously, clinicians had to wait for symptoms or crises to occur before intervening, leading to poorer outcomes and increased complications.

Veterinary-specific AI companies, such as sylvester.ai’s Tably, who are using AI to interpret the Feline Grimace Scale (FGS) to assess pain, are becoming available. Antech has had great success with its RenalTech platform utilizing AI to analyze analytes and biomarkers to identify chronic kidney disease (CKD) even earlier, and the other lab companies are rolling out similar services in radiology, ultrasound, and slide pathology. A special shoutout to Zoetis Diagnostics for developing in-clinic AI-assisted testing with their Vetscan Imagyst system.

Rather than replacing veterinary professionals, AI will augment our delivery of care and improve patient outcomes.

3 - Distributed care will expand access to veterinary services

Distributed medical care refers to the delivery of services in a variety of locations, in-clinic, in- home, and virtual. In simplest terms, think of having a dental procedure performed at a dentist’s office, a home-health provider of routine check-ups, physical therapy or chronic care, or a virtual pediatric telemedicine appointment. Extend that into telemedicine, mobile veterinary clinics and services, and online ordering. My generation’s “one-stop shopping” origins transform into “multi- stops,” all centrally served by online technology. Thank you, internet.

The vulnerability and limitation of traditional physical one-stop service and shopping is literally accessing the shopping or services. Could you get a timely appointment? Did they have what you needed when you needed it? How far away was it, and were you able to get there easily? When vets began asking me why they needed to “be on the internet” in the early 1990s, I told them it was to provide access to whatever they were selling or doing whenever the client wanted it. That’s still true today. The internet is the intermediary. You can connect your clinic, home care, and online offerings in one virtual stop on a computer or smartphone.

Distributed care also provides an opportunity for niche providers to excel. Demand for pet care services and products is so great that if you can solve a problem that was once thought to be too small for a large provider, you can succeed. I believe this offers tremendous potential for cats, small mammals, birds, and less common conditions in those species and beyond. I was recently approached to work with a group on a specific endocrine disease that affects less than 5% to 7% of all dogs and cats. In the past, there was no way to help that small of a cohort cost- effectively. There's a real chance to pull it off using a combination of in-clinic, in-home, and virtual care methods.

Another advantage of a distributed care model is reducing the friction from the process. Today’s digital generation pet parents are accustomed to online scheduling, ordering, and communicating, especially before they visit a business in person. Anything less will leave them looking for those experiences elsewhere. This is why the bigger corporate groups and online retailers have invested heavily in creating exceptional digital experiences.

For independent clinics, it’s essential to offer as much of what you do where and how your clients want it. This means online access to (nearly) everything. Partnering with home delivery, auto-ship services, scheduling, digital check-in, texting, cloud-based medical records and communications, inventory management, and so on are no longer “nice to have” but “must have” in order to succeed.

4 - Pet insurance will become a requirement for some clinicians

I’ve been involved with pet insurance for much of my career. I’m proud to have been a part of the Wharton School of Business team that won the business competition and later brought PetPlan to the US market. While another group later acquired that brand, I’ve been a loud and proud pet insurance advocate for decades. Now, it’s getting serious.

Rising costs are a primary driver of more pets covered by insurance. About 3% of all US pets are insured, with that number predicted to hit 25% in twenty years. A Zoetis and Pumpkin report revealed insured pets see their vet 1.5 times more per year and spend more than double those without insurance.

So, the clear trend is more insured pets, but I see more. I anticipate a time in the near future when certain vets will require pet insurance before accepting a pet patient.

Imagine a “boutique” vet provider who practices highly individualized, high-quality, distributed care. They have gleaming offices and conduct home visits when needed. They are exclusive to the point they require an annual retainer fee to access their care.

Before you write this off as fiction, this model has existed in human medicine for years, and several veterinarians offer similar services.

Now imagine the entry point to a veterinary provider is you must have pet insurance.

Gone are money squabbles over what test the client can or can’t afford, what treatments must be culled due to budget, and a barrage of questions of whether or not a recommendation is really, truly, and absolutely necessary. Sounds pretty good to me.

These are only four trends that will shape veterinary medicine over the next ten years. Strap in because there may be some turbulence, but we will reach our destination of a better future.

Here’s to pattern recognition,

Dr. Ernie Ward
Chief Veterinary Officer, VerticalVet