Technological advancements are being used to improve not just the quality of human life but also that of animals (Ouyang et al., 2019). Veterinary medicine has experienced significant transformations enabling practitioners to make more accurate prognoses and faster diagnoses, thus saving animal lives. The use of technology has led to the provision of better outcomes not only for the pets but also for their owners (Ouyang et al., 2019). Veterinary practice management software is used in the management of patient information, treatment planning, appointment scheduling, vaccinations, inventory tracking, and follow-ups as well as back-office functions such as invoicing (Ouyang et al., 2019). Such software programs are needed so that the veterinary practice can perform their tasks efficiently.
IDEXX Cornerstone is a management practice solution for veterinarians that comes highly recommended by the American Hospital Association (Meredith, 2016). IDEXX Cornerstone is built and owned by Idexx Laboratories that is located in Portland Maine and is sold as an integrated solution to veterinarians as it solves the managerial, back-office, and clinical needs of both private and public practices (Meredith, 2016). What makes IDESS Cornerstone stand out from the competition is its ability to be fully integrated with both internal and external diagnostic imaging equipment, education services, laboratory diagnostic testing, and client communication.
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IDEXX Cornerstone has been packaged as a desktop application designed to work in a Windows environment. IDEXX Cornerstone works well in Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10 operating system environment (Meredith, 2016). IDEXX Cornerstone can also be configured to work with an on-premise or remote server depending on the requirements of the veterinary practice. IDEXX Cornerstone has an inbuilt data backup recovery and management module that offers automated daily backups, automated recoveries, and data validation mechanisms that take off responsibility from veterinarian staff in order to eliminate the possibility of human error (Meredith, 2016). IDEXX provides paid educational resources on how to use their software in addition to the free training video modules and training manuals that are offered once the software has been purchased.
The main advantage provided by IDEXX to practices is the software’s ease of use, integration, customer support, performance, and advanced features that the software provides to ease the management of veterinarian services (Meredith, 2016). One major disadvantage of IDEXX is that the software was not designed for paperless practices, and there are no offerings in perfuming routine tasks.
IDEXX Cornerstone robust software that includes the following offerings reporting tool for the veterinary practice, inventory management, compliance assessment, electronic medical records integration, scheduling, diagnostics and imaging integrations, and a whiteboard. All these offerings are vital to the management of veterinary practice with ease.
AVImark is a veterinarian software solution built and owned by Henry Schein Animal health that boasts of over 10,000 users of the software worldwide according to company statistics (Covetrus, 2019). AVImark is the preferred software because of its scalability and ease of use when it comes to meeting the dynamic needs of a growing veterinarian practice. AVImark is a reliable solution that has been designed to meet and support the management of veterinary practices of different sizes (Covetrus, 2019). AVImark’ s most notable features include appointments and bookings, treatment management, invoicing, prescription plans, electronic medical records management, inventory management, mobile device compatibility, telemedicine, and paperless practice features. AVImark is easy to implement and offers seamless integrations to different systems such as IDEXX, Antech, Scil, and Heska, among others, that manage the importation of imaging and laboratory results. Avimark offers customer support to customers both online (Live chat), on the phone, and a remote session through TeamViewer for support (Covetrus, 2019). AVImark is offered as a desktop application to be installed in server environments as well as a software-as-a-service platform with a monthly subscription.
The main advantage of AVImark as a veterinary practice software is that it offers efficient management of the practice (Covetrus, 2019). AVImark runs in the cloud and is intelligent hence giving better control and management to veterinarians (Covetrus, 2019). Through its SOAP functionality, AVImark can allow veterinarians to monitor and manage specific animal conditions and prescribe the appropriate treatment plans based on the animal’s diagnosis. Also, the system can be integrated with laboratory systems, thus enabling veterinary practices to have the ability to download and export lab results on a needs basis (Covetrus, 2019). The only disadvantage the software has is that the merging of accounts has not been fully integrated, thus causing major problems for veterinary practices.
Depending on the needs of a practice, one can choose to either go with AVImark of IDEXX. From online reviews, AVImark is the recommended software for veterinarian practices based on price and ease of use with a score of 4.5out 5 from Capterra. IDEXX received a score of 3.8 out of 5 because most of its features require improvements and paid training in order to get most out of the software, which limits some users on what they can do with the software.
References
Covetrus. (2019). AVImark Our solutions. Your success . Retrieved from https://softwareservices.covetrus.com/wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2019/08/AVImark-product-brochure.pdf
Meredith, T. (2016). Building Today’s Veterinary Practice Series . Retrieved from https://todaysveterinarypractice.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2016/06/T1501C09.pdf
Ouyang, Z., Sargeant, J., Thomas, A., Wycherley, K., Ma, R., & Esmaeilbeigi, R. et al. (2019). A scoping review of ‘big data’, ‘informatics’, and ‘bioinformatics’ in the animal health and veterinary medical literature. Animal Health Research Reviews , 20 (1), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1466252319000136
