A diagnostic tool is only as good as its interpretation
Find out how Zoetis’ complimentary consultation service puts the puzzle pieces together
Sponsored by Zoetis
Adam Christman, DVM, MBA
And I want to talk more a little bit about the virtual lab Dr. Hann. So, the virtual lab has many offerings to it too. And they play a vital role in the way in which we practice medicine today. So, we know that adjusting to technologies such as AI can be scary. You think of AI for some reason we get scared of it too, and it's overwhelming, but you embrace it. So how helpful has this been for, you know, what your experience has been like? And how has this been for, you know, what you're seeing out there today?
Lisa Hann, DVM, DACVIM (SAIM)
The artificial intelligence is great, and definitely gives us additional diagnostics and quick access to certain answers. But it's a piece of the puzzle. There's a stepwise process that we go through for kind of each case of, you know, getting from "Okay, this is how they're presenting to this is the diagnosis," And then that after that the treatment process, the prognosis, the follow up care. And so, we can utilize specialists. So, we have our consultation service that can work hand in hand with a lot of these diagnostic tools to provide kind of more individualized care. And we're trying to do a couple things differently with our consultation service, so that we can provide very individualized personalized experience for our customers, which includes having the ability to consult with us in different ways, the ways that work best for their practice. So, email consults, Zoom consults, and then having access to different specialties. And then beyond just having the consult, we do consistently provide a written report, which is not always the case with consultation services. So that really allows them to tie in with the pet owner of they can provide that report. And so they know that they've had a specialist involved with the case, because I don't know that pet owners are always aware of what that there are specialists available in veterinary medicine or what that provides beyond the general practitioner. And so knowing that, that added value of kind of that relationship, and how we're all working together for that pet to get the best care possible.
Adam Christman, DVM, MBA
Yeah. And just what you're both talking about, there's a global network of specialists, right? I mean, just to digest that for a moment, that's pretty impressive, knowing that you can have access to someone around the world. And I'm curious to get your thoughts on that. Dr. Wolfe. What has that experience been like for you?
Shelli Wolfe, DVM, MBA
I had specialists from multiple other countries. It's provided accessibility and under two hours, and it's been very...I've been able to understand, despite our time differences and language barriers, it's been very understandable and very, very informative.
Carl Clary, DVM
Things that I've liked about it in veteranary medicine, in vet schools, you're talking if you do CBC profile, urinalysis, blah, blah, blah...you're gonna get the diagnostic. You're going to have a black and white diagnosis. You're gonna know what it is. And what my young veterinarians, most of them come like "Well I was taught that if I did this, I would know what the problem is." That don't happen that often. If it is, it's almost always a bad guy. But if you don't have that, if you've got all this information from you, but you're not sure how to put it together, and you talk to a specialist, sometimes they can help clear my mind and say, "This is where you need to be looking." You may you gotta have some differential diagnosis, but at least you've kind of helped. You can sleep at night knowing you've done the best for that pet that you can. And that's a big deal too as a veterinarian. You know, I think that's one of the biggest problems we have is this ambiguity of what what's wrong with that pet? Because we were taught if we did XYZ, we know what the answer is. And that's not the case.
Lisa Hann, DVM, DACVIM (SAIM)
Yeah, it really is about interpretation of diagnostics. It's not just a result. There are certain diseases that you may get a very clear answer. But there are a lot of times where a diagnostic tool is only as good as the interpretation of it. And so we, as specialists can help in that process, put that puzzle together.
Shelli Wolfe, DVM, MBA
And sometimes it's only a CBC. You don't need...we made it to present the whole case to them, but you could present only a urinalysis finding. I have a protein losing nephropathy I'm working on and so we're just looking at that focused as well.
Adam Christman, DVM, MBA
Yeah, I love that we're providing access to care not only to our clients, but to us, the veterinarian. So that's fantastic.
Carl Clary, DVM
The one thing you haven't mentioned that's really important is if I was watching the show, okay, how much is it? How much is it?
Cory Penn, DVM
Yeah, it's complimentary. Having access to the specialist is complimentary. I almost think of it like, if you use the Zoetis diagnostic offering, it's kind of like going back to veterinary school where you can get access to experts, not only fromclinical pathology where you can go down and knock on clin path's door. But if you get a result and you say, "Okay, well now I want to kind of know what I want to do next steps. "I can go talk to an internal medicine specialis.t I can go knock on an oncologist's door and I can get an individualized complimentary plan to move forward with the case.
Adam Christman, DVM, MBA
Amazing. It really is. Well, great, thank you so much doctors. This is wonderful.
