It’s a Veterinary Appidemic! An Intro
Smartphones and tablets, consider yourselves warned. Veterinary professionals are coming!
Welcome to VMD Tech’s new series on veterinary apps. The goal is to provide the most comprehensive resource on veterinary apps to date. We will do this through a series called “Vet Appidemic” (like an epidemic, but an app-idemic). Get it? Moving on…
Vet Appidemic will consist of recurring posts about apps that can help you in your daily practice as a veterinarian, technician, or student.
Want to jump right in? FIND ALL THE VET APPS HERE
What is an App? Let’s start with some basics for the non-techies among us. An “app”, short for application, is just a computer program built to run on some type of device (typically your mobile phone or tablet). Apps are essentially versions of websites or computer programs that make the information optimized and easy to reference on smaller screens.
Medical apps are currently a hot topic. A quick Google query reveals that medical apps are something human medical professionals are desperately searching for these days, and veterinarians are no different.
What’s even more interesting? The first time this search term appeared was in 2007! Compared to our 5000 years of documented history, we are clearly in the neonate years of apps.
Since 2007, medical-related app development has exploded with the widespread use of smartphones and tablets. The human medical field is now flooded with helpful apps. To this effect, the FDA has started regulating apps for human medicine just as medical devices are regulated (this is a good thing).
With that said, veterinary medicine lags in terms of variety and quality of apps designed to improve our ability to care for animals.
VMD Tech hopes to catalyze this conversation, and inspire our own… Appidemic.
What Will Be Covered? You’ve already heard about some of our most useful general apps such as Google Drive, other cloud storage programs, and Google Voice. You’ve also heard breaking app news such as the new, awesome Timeless Vet Drug Index app.
It’s finally time to dive into more veterinary-specific apps that are useful for every type of veterinary practitioner and technician. We’ll also cover some human medical apps and other general apps that can aid our animal care or help our clients.
We’ll share which devices the apps are available on, their pricing structure, provide some experience on how they work (or don’t), and offer ideas for their use.
A Call For Help VMD Tech’s goal of disseminating technology information to veterinarians cannot be met without your help. Please reach out or comment below to share the apps you find useful!
Also, please take 5 minutes to participate in Timeless Veterinary’s North American Technology Survey – a research project devoted to assessing veterinary medicine’s current state of app development.
Ready? The Vet Appidemic begins this week with our first post covering the Target Reference and Vet Calculator Plus!
