Posts tagged practice management

We just got back from the New York State Veterinary Conference.  This conference is a joint venture between the New York State Veterinary Medical Society and the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine in Ithaca, NY.  It’s right in our back yard, and it was a great opportunity to talk to veterinarians and others in the veterinary industry.  While our booth was in a secondary gallery, we received a lot of interest and made some new connections.

Here’s what we learned:

We were approached several times by ambulatory veterinarians.  We discovered this group of veterinarians has a great need for a simple, easy to use system that will help them keep track of their records and transactions on the road.  Because of the difficulty of entering data on the move, many still used paper systems that sometimes required hours of tedious re-entry.  We think this may be a good niche for Menagerie PM, since we have a shared focus on simplicity and providing ubiquitous access through a cloud-hosted service.

Speaking of “the cloud”, we also heard this term repeated to us several times.  It seems mainstream awareness has risen for cloud-based services, most likely through examples such as Google, Amazon, Apple, and Netflix.  As software developers we have been developing on cloud-based infrastructure for a while, so it is great to go out and find that people are showing interest in it.  We were asked some good questions about security and data protection, and as more services move to the cloud, the IT industry continues to develop new approaches and answers to these questions.  While some adaptation is necessary, on the whole we feel that the benefits to moving to cloud-hosted services are overwhelming.

We met a lot of conference goers who were excited about a web-based cloud-hosted solution, and liked our philosophy of UI simplicity,   We received many suggestions, and one attendee even sat down with us to compare his current system with Menagerie Whiteboard.  Another group whose interest was piqued were financial consultants and accountants.  These folks help veterinarians manage their business and regularly struggle to get important data out of the existing practice management systems.  This often involves manually re-entering print-outs of financial data.  They realize that digital systems should make this easier, not harder, and we were advised to incorporate the AAHA chart of accounts and easy Quickbook export functionality.  Some services such as Freshbooks and Outright allow accountants to log directly in to the client records system so they have direct access to this information.  We think there is a lot we can do to improvement and streamline this crucial relationship between veterinarians and their advisors.

All told we had a lot of fun exhibiting.  We were a little nervous since this was the first time we had exhibited anywhere, but I think it was the perfect venue.  With a last minute run to Staples, I think our booth actually turned out to be quite well outfitted.  Our banner was large and highly visible and we found the perfect stand to demo Menagerie Whiteboard on the iPad.  Because of this positive experience we are definitely on the lookout for other opportunities to exhibit and demo Menagerie Whiteboard and previews of our new Menagerie PM practice management system.

Aaron & Michal

The MenagerieVet Team

Menagerie Whiteboard - Our standalone digital whiteboard for managing patient workflow.  Works on all modern browsers, and keeps all workstations synchronized in real time.  Now FREE, sign up and try it out!

Menagerie PM - Our new web-based cloud-hosted practice management service.  We’d love to hear what you need in a practice management system.  Please sign up to our mailing list to receive status updates as development progresses.