A Digital Ecosystem for Pet Care
VCA
Overview
VCA Animal Hospitals
To care for over 5 million pets across Canada and the United States, VCA built a healthcare network with more than 750 veterinary hospitals and over 14,000 pet healthcare providers.
The Mandate
Since 2014, nventive is VCA’s digital project partner and helps the network revolutionize the pet healthcare sector. The biggest challenge was to allow a continuous information flow between veterinarians, technicians and pet owners to promote professional and flexible hospital services, offer an improved productivity, and strengthen client relations.
Our Realizations
- Mobile app development (Android and iOS / Mobile and tablets)
- Back-end cloud structure created
- Patient file
- Instant messaging
- Notifications
- Videoconference
- Members’ service enrollment
- Payment services
- Quality assurance
Technology
- Mobile development: C#, Uno, Xamarin
- Back-end development: .Net Core, Service Fabric
Collaborate to create
"We really were able to establish a partnership relationship with VCA that goes way beyond the typical client-supplier relationship. Our team really feels part of VCA’s success, thanks to continuous feedback and open collaboration between our teams, which has fostered a deep engagement level across all team members. That makes working with VCA not only challenging, but also fun and rewarding."
Charles-Olivier Levasseur, Solution Director
Digital Solutions Developed
Because they wanted to offer the best possible experience for pet owners, VCA needed to develop digital products to simplify and to centralize all the information in a single solution.
The client portal created enables pet owners to have an independent and daily access to the information on their pet’s healthcare, while having the possibility to exchange with VCA’s teams if needed.
Two apps were developed by our teams:
MyVCA
iOS and Android app
- Access to medical information and to appointment platform
- Telemedicine service that allows users to access virtual consultations with veterinarians
- Reminders for administration of medicine and prescription renewals
- Anytime chat service with a veterinarian to get advice on urgent care
- Contextual care guides adapted to the pet’s age and species in real time
VCA MESSENGER
iOS and Android app
- Immediate communication by text messages between the veterinarian staff and the pet owners when the animal is admitted to the hospital.
- Chat history
- Photos and video downloading and editing
Promote the Collaborators’ Productivity
Several needs had to be met to facilitate productivity and information exchange between the different collaborators and VCA’s teams.
One of the main obstacles was to simplify the access to large data volumes generated by hospitals for each client.
The second challenge was to automatize and to alleviate certain daily and repetitive tasks with a low added value to allow the teams to focus on more important matters.
To answer these major needs, we created a self-serve platform and a customized app for the hospital staff.
These two apps were developed:
VCA RETRIEVER iPad app
- Pet owners are efficiently guided during their admission at the veterinarian hospital
- The pet’s file is updated directly on the tablet
- PayPal bill payment and appointment planning for the follow-up with clients
VCA MYSCHEDULE iPad app
- Visualization of a summary of the veterinarian’s workday
- Verification of past or future appointments
- Easy access to patient’s information
- Task definition and follow-up reminders
Main Challenges Taken Up
Creating a Cloud Infrastructure
With this cloud structure, the challenge was to have capacity for an important number of users from everywhere across North America. To do so, we decided to go for Microsoft Azure’s Service Fabric as our technological choice. It was the best option at the time because of its operating performance.
The cloud infrastructure development enabled us to centralize communication channels between the clients and VCA: indeed, the clients log in their account and all the information is automatically there. For VCA, this server is not only used for our apps, but also for all its information system.
Adapting to the Pet Care Process
The apps are designed for daily use by extra-busy healthcare providers and for pet owners concerned about their faithful companion’s well-being.
For nventive, the priority was to reflect the daily action flow of the end users: presenting the veterinarian’s program for the day, accessing the animal’s information with MySchedule, reminding appointments and medicine administration… The entire flow is taken into account.
Absorbing a Complex User Path
The system can implement many complex flows between the different apps and the systems.
For example, an employee can register a client appointment in the Retriever app. The veterinarian’s agenda is then updated, and the resource agenda is also filled out (rooms, medical equipment, etc.).
Before the appointment, the client receives a notification inviting her to confirm her appointment and to pre-register. When the client arrives at the hospital, enrollment is quick and the appointment can take place seamlessly!
«Collaborating with VCA has been a great experience for the A-Team. Not only do we get to work in a field that brings good to the world (veterinarian services), but we also have technical challenges that are fun to solve. From telemedicine to instant messaging, client facing and internal applications, cloud solutions for a large volume of traffic, we always welcome VCA's push to be the best in their field and finding technical solutions to give the best experience to their customers. Knowing that what we do will help pets be healthier is a great source of motivation!»
François Albert, Team Lead
