* Vet hospital uses video to provide better animal care
Tech consultants on the front lines tell great stories. Like the one about how installing eight high-end Web cams ($1,500 each) helped an emergency veterinarian hospital save money and provide better animal care.
BDE Computer Services in Clifton, N.J., started working with Animal Emergency & Referral Associates when its animal hospital was a hole in the ground. BDE’s Bill Rooney and Peter Getchell provided all the data technology and telephone systems for the after-hours vet hospital, but they like to talk about the innovative use of Web cams most of all.
“The vets save money by having one medical technician monitor the four critical care wards,” Rooney says. “Any of the 38 computers in the building can monitor each of the cameras.”
BDE used Axis Communications Camera Model 2130 PTZ (Pan, Tilt, Zoom) units. Any PC in the vet’s office, as well as any PC in an employee’s home connected through a VPN, can move and focus the cameras as needed. Resolution is high enough to zoom in and read medical monitoring equipment displays, as well as check on the furry clients. The cameras include 16-to-1 optical zoom, a long-enough reach to allow vets to watch animals during radiation treatments.
Animals get better care as well. Just like some people, dogs and cats often hide how much they hurt. Watching their behavior when they’re alone gives vital clues to their true condition.
This is a real small business-to-small business partnership. BDE Computer has 15 full-time employees and calls on trusted subcontractors when necessary. Animal Emergency has 65 employees and works only by referral from local vets in the northern New Jersey and New York metro area.
The Animal Emergency referral came to BDE Computers from an earlier customer, a nearby MRI vet center. That’s another key part of small-business success: Referrals carry more weight with small-business owners and managers than advertising any day.
If you haven’t met with a tech provider lately, you might be surprised by some of the services they offer. For instance, BDE Computers provided Animal Emergency & Referral with tablet PCs; digital X-ray machine integration; wireless support for tablets, notebooks and client connections throughout the hospital; telephone system installation and integration; and secure VPN connections for staff from home.
“Vets use the tablet PCs to show pet owners X-rays and other images in the waiting area, so doctors don’t have to take people back into the emergency rooms,” Rooney says. Using Toshiba tablets running Microsoft Tablet software, doctors can show images, zoom the Web cam onto the pet in question, and handwrite notes right on the images. Then they can print the images as a record for the owners.
And when the pet goes home, BDE Computers makes a CD-ROM with the medical records, including X-rays, to go home as well.
