Aaron Massecar, Executive Director of the Veterinary Innovation Council, joins Dr. Andy Roark to discuss a recent article on technology turning pet owner homes into the first touchpoint for diagnostics and screening of veterinary cases.
You can also listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Soundcloud, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts!
LINKS
Article: Home is the Emerging Care Site
Healthcare and Information Management Systems Society
Dr. Andy Roark Exam Room Communication Tool Box Team Training Course
Dr. Andy Roark Charming the Angry Client Team Training Course
ABOUT OUR GUEST
Aaron Massecar, currently serving as the Executive Director of the Veterinary Innovation Council, brings a diverse expertise to this episode. Previously, he held roles as the Vice President of Education at VEG, Assistant Director of Continuing Education at Colorado State University, and served as an Adjunct Instructor at Texas A&M. Aaron played a pivotal role in establishing the Veterinary Innovation Summit and Veterinary Entrepreneurship Academy, leaving a lasting mark in the field.
Outside his professional commitments, Aaron thrives on physical challenges. Recently completing a demanding 127-mile gravel bike race in Iceland, he continues to embrace new feats. Notably, he tackled a 200-mile gravel race from Moab UT to Fruita CO, showcasing his enduring passion for adventure.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Andy Roark (00:07):
Welcome everybody to the Cone of Shame Veterinary Podcast. I am your host, Dr. Andy Roark. Guys, I’m here with my buddy Dr. Aaron Massecar. We are talking about innovation in vet space. We start off talking about innovations in veterinary care that is going to move diagnostic and screening into the pet owner’s home. And so if you are interested in how technology is going to make pet owners more savvy and also put diagnostic and screening tools into their hands and how this changes the way that we’re going to work with them in the future, this is a great episode. We start off talking about that. We kind of use that talk about innovation in general. I ask Aaron about what he’s most excited about with innovation in the vet space. He’s really neat. He’s the executive director of the Vet Innovation Council, so he thinks a lot about this.
(00:57):
He sees a ton of startup companies and people having ideas about innovation and where that medicine might go. And so he’s got this really neat perspective on the bleeding edge of technology and innovation in VE medicine and where it might go. So anyway, is a really neat thought provoking episode. Guys. I hope you’ll enjoy it. I really enjoyed making it. As you’ll hear on this, I like Aaron a lot. I like to give him a hard time and just sort of push him and make him try to commit to what he thinks is going to happen. And so anyway, we do that. It’s really fun. Let’s get into it.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter (01:32):
This is your show. We’re glad you’re here. We want to help you in your veterinary career. Welcome to the Cone of Shame with Dr. Andy Roark.
Dr. Andy Roark (01:49):
Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Aaron Massecar. How are you?
Dr. Aaron Massecar (01:52):
I’m fantastic, Andy. Thanks for having me.
Dr. Andy Roark (01:54):
Man, it’s good to have you here. This has been too long coming. I love when we get to sit down and talk. For those who do not know you, man, you are an interesting person. You’ve had a lot of different titles doing a lot of different things. You are currently the Executive Director of the Veterinary Innovation Council. Why don’t you talk a little bit about what the Veterinary Innovation Council is? It sounds like a group of people like robed, people who meet in a secret location to discuss what will happen in vet medicine in the future.
Dr. Aaron Massecar (02:28):
You’re probably like 66%. So the locations are secret and we do talk about the future of veterinary medicine, but nobody wears robes or tassels or anything like that. So it’s a sponsor driven organization. It’s a 501 C6, and we look at the future of veterinary medicine. We have one conference every year, the Veterinary Innovation Summit. And then when we’re not focusing on that, we’re focusing on some of the trends. So we’ve looked at things like telemedicine, nurse practitioners or mid-level providers. Right now we’re focusing on access to care and we’re looking at a couple of other things like super sexy topic, interoperability. Everyone wants to know about that, AI…
Dr. Andy Roark (03:14):
I don’t know what that is, what is interoperability?
Dr. Aaron Massecar (03:17):
So you know how pimm systems, they do not communicate with each other at all.
Dr. Andy Roark (03:22):
Oh yeah.
Dr. Aaron Massecar (03:23):
So it’s basically trying to create the framework so that those systems can communicate with each other.
Dr. Andy Roark (03:29):
And you call that interoperability, that’s not a word at all. You just made that up. That’s not even a thing.
Dr. Aaron Massecar (03:35):
Just a messenger. Just a messenger.
Dr. Andy Roark (03:38):
I don’t think that’s a real word for making PIMS systems talk to each other. That seems ridiculous. All right. Okay. What else do you got besides PIMS systems talking to each other?
Dr. Aaron Massecar (03:51):
Big focus right now is on artificial intelligence, so what’s happening with radiology in particular, but then how’s that spilling over into all sorts of other areas? Everything from endoscopy to decision support to just about everything that’s affecting the clinic. We’re looking at companies who are using AI for inventory management, everything that you can imagine. Companies are starting to use AI for that.
Dr. Andy Roark (04:18):
Everything where a human being looks at information and then makes a decision. I could a hundred percent see that. Yeah, totally. Yep. That’s fascinating. Alright, I reached out to you. You have an article that I saw recently that I really liked. It’s called Home is the Emerging Care Site. It was in the last Today’s Veterinary Business magazine that came out. And I like that because I always thinking about business models for vet medicine and I like thinking about where opportunities are and I’m seeing a real increase in home care providers, so veterinary house called vets, things like that. And there seems to be demand from the public. I see a lot more doctors shifting over to this.
(04:59):
I think that there’s real opportunity for entrepreneurship here. So if you’re a general practice doctor and you want to work for yourself, this is probably the fastest way to get up and get going on your own. And so I’m looking at that and I’m sort of thinking about the way that we’re working and what that looks like and the demand that I see for those home services. And then I see your article on Home is the Emerging Care Site, and I’m sort of looking through it and you’ve had a number of ideas about what sort of home-based treatments look like and home-based medical opportunities look like. And so with an innovation sort of lens, I’d like to look at the practice of medicine in the pattern’s home. And where do you see that now and where do you see that going?
Dr. Aaron Massecar (05:41):
Yeah, so this actually goes back a long time ago to the first veterinary innovation summit that we had where John Ayres was there and he was talking about preventative wellness is a major shift, and this is back in 2017. And you can see that being the case. There’s more and more companies who are starting to focus on that and early screening and that sort of thing. And then at the same time, you see companies like Whistle hitting the market and they were primarily a wearable device for GPS tracking and some activity tracking, and then they start launching some of the algorithms that they have. So this was probably in 2018 maybe, where they were presenting on the algorithms that they were using to look at two things in particular. So one was how often is the animal itching and scratching so they could find the hotspot before the hotspot emerged?
(06:38):
So that was interesting. Another thing that they found was when does activity levels return to normal? So most people were thinking within two weeks your animal’s going to be back to normal. What they found through their algorithms was that it was closer to a month. So this goes back a ways, but then you start looking at all the direct to consumer products that are out there in the market now. So we have a litter robot by whisker. We also have some other things in the house just to kind of help manage the animals, but there’s all these devices that are starting to collect information and yet they don’t have any real access to veterinarians. So I talked with some of these companies and I said, okay, what are you doing with this information? Right, because I’m not a veterinarian, but I’ve talked to a few and they said that it’d be really helpful to know if your cat has increased urination, if the frequency with which your cat is urinating is going up, if your cat’s weight is going down.
(07:37):
These are important things to know for early screening. And yet a lot of the times we’re relying on the animal owner in order to figure out what’s normal and what’s not normal. And the animal owner is just not around enough. So there’s all these devices that are collecting data that can inform future protocols when it comes to taking care of that animal, and yet nobody’s really bridging that gap. So you want to talk about business opportunities. How are you consolidating all this data into a platform and serving that up for veterinarians in a way that it’s easy to access long-term? Is it possible that some veterinarians are basically going to look like air traffic controllers where they’re sitting there with multiple monitors and they’re just monitoring things? Well, that’s already existing on the human side. If somebody’s in ICU, they just see all the data that the human they’re collecting from the human. But all of this exists in the home now, and yet nobody’s really capitalizing on it. So that’s the kind of stuff that I think is really fascinating. It’s hard to tell where it’s going to go in the future, but there’s definitely an opportunity there.
Dr. Andy Roark (08:41):
Alright, cool. So why do you think, I have a theory on this, but why do you think that this is an opportunity that’s not being capitalized on now when you start to look at these products and you look at what’s there, why do you think there’s a hole in the market? I have my qualms with modern capitalism, however, I do think that it’s pretty generally good at looking at where there’s opportunities to generate revenue and going, yeah, let’s do that. And there’s a reason that we don’t see this going. I think. What do you think?
Dr. Aaron Massecar (09:15):
Well, the primary reason why any startup fails is bad product market fit. The second reason is timing What this requires as a veterinarian’s eyeballs to be on this information and every veterinarian that I talked to today is just overwhelmed with the amount of work that they have to do. And so asking for that to come in and say, yeah, can you look at this? Can you pay attention to this? And it’s like, look, I’m dealing with this dog that is currently dying. I don’t have time to look at screening. Which is, I think another reason why AI is going to be hitting the market in a really big way over the next little while is because if they are collecting all of the data and they can standardize that data and provide understanding of normalcy and deviance from the normalcy, then you don’t need a veterinarian to look at it in a lot of ways because you can find out pretty quickly, hey, this is abnormal behavior.
(10:13):
Most companies don’t want to dip into this realm. But if you think about just the amount of labor that’s required, so if you have tons of data that’s being served up to multiple veterinarians in multiple different locations, that’s going to be really challenging. But if you have actionable insights from a veterinarian team who has built the product and built the algorithm, then you can modify a behavior at the home and you don’t actually need to serve that up to the veterinarian anymore, which is not where we want to go. We want to keep a veterinarian in the center of that care cycle. But in a lot of cases, if veterinarians don’t have time for it, and this is an issue we probably shouldn’t wade into, but if there actually is a care shortage, then that kind of stuff is not going to be happening very soon. Veterinarians just don’t have time for it.
Dr. Andy Roark (11:04):
I think that that’s spot on. I do see that as a real opportunity for AI. We’ve had products try to come to market before that are activity monitors and others that do things as far as tracking heart rate and stuff like that. And generally what happens is that people find out their dog sleeps a lot more than they thought they did. You know what I mean? And that boy, he really doesn’t do much when I’m not here. And that’s the big takeaway. And so it’s just been kind of interesting. There’s two parts of it is they’re generating this data, but you’re right, veterinarians are not excited to wade into a pool of data and do data analysis, and there’s really no model for compensation for that. You’ve got a 25 minute appointment and we’re supposed to do significant data analysis in order to do that. And you go, none of this fits into the model of $65 physical exam in a 20 to 30 minute block.
(12:02):
Where does this interface in a way that actually works? And so I think a lot of people struggle with that. I also think that pet owners have struggled a little bit with the return on investment in these sorts of things. It’s a good idea. It’s like buying multivitamins. You get fired up and you buy a bottle of multivitamins and then you go back and you’re like, man, this stuff is expensive. And I didn’t see significant results from the first bottle of multivitamins that I bought, and I don’t know that I want to continue to pay for multivitamins for the rest of my life. And that’s the headspace that young Andy had when I was like, God, these stuff costs a lot. And I don’t know that it’s actually not seeing them any return. And so when you’ve got a healthy pet and you’re monitoring them and what’s, how motivated are people to keep going with that?
(12:50):
It’s funny. I think people, I’ve thought a lot about this, Aaron, with how people are in their pets. Because I see veterinarians all the time going, man, pet spending is soaring. People are spending so much money on their pets. And I’m like, yeah, they’re spending money on costumes and they are their buying football jerseys and sunglasses and strollers, but they’re not like, oh buddy, give me this thing that’s going to actually help my pet lose weight. They’re like, no, I want more fatty stuff that my pet’s going to love. And yeah, he’s going to pack on five more pounds, but he’s going to be happy. And they don’t want to think about mortality in their pets. They just want to suck the joy out of it. And I get it. I really do. And I’m not trying to be critical, but it’s always been interesting to me.
(13:38):
I think for these things to work there has the wellness healthcare part has to be wrapped into a happy package. It’s like your own Apple watch. It’s like, I didn’t get an Apple watch to remind me of my mortality. We’re going to look at this Andy and make sure you’re sleeping well. As you get older, your sleep’s not as good and we’re going to check your heart health. And I’m like, Ooh, this. This doesn’t sound as fun and sexy as I had originally thought about. It’s like, no, we’re going to get you a watch. You can play games on and text photos to your friends and also in the background it’s going to be watching your health. But I do think there’s some of that. And the other part is actually taking this and turning it into something that’s usable. And so I think you make a really interesting point with AI.
(14:25):
And also I think your point about most businesses fail on timing. I think that’s a fun way to kind of think about business failure. But I think that there were probably a crop of products that were five to ten years too early that will probably, we’ll see something similar that will work much more easily going forward. Alright, I am so proud to unveil the biggest project I have ever worked on. This is a partnership with NAVC’s VetFolio and Uncharted, which is the veterinary conference that I started and run for fifteen years. I have worked with people on being effective as communicators and making their practice better places to be. Now I am so thrilled to be launching the Leadership Essentials certificate with Uncharted and VetFolio guys. These are the seven courses that I believe really believe anyone who’s leading other people in vet medicine should have.
(15:19):
This is vision and value setting. This is basic strategic planning. It is understanding different communication styles. And I have my friend Stephanie Goss helping teach that session. It is getting the team to buy in to new ideas and initiatives. It is how to coach and give feedback. It is how to set priorities. It is how to delegate effectively. It is how to do time management. It is the talks and the stories that I am probably most well known for giving. My red.talk is in here and my GPA talk is in here. Everything about the North stars, everything that I lay out where I’m like, this is just so essential to managing people. It’s the trust game. It is everything about building and maintaining trust with your team. I think that this is something that I would recommend for anyone who is a practice owner. It’s anyone definitely who’s becoming a new practice owner.
(16:13):
It’s for anybody who has especially gotten promoted up into management. It is huge for our team leads. We take people who are CSRs, we take people who are technicians and we make them lead techs or lead CSRs, and we give them zero leadership or management training. There’s no excuse for that anymore. This is on demand whenever you want. It’s broken up. It’s eight hours. It’s got RACE ce, it has the Uncharted VetFolio certificate with it. It is there. It is accessible. I really hope that people will take this and put it to work. I went really hard on this. It has been years in the making and refining to get this content down. So it is really for everybody who is leading and managing other people in vet medicine. I hope you’ll check it out. I’m so proud of it. I’m so glad to be partnering with NAVC on it. Anyway, guys, I’ll put links in this show note. I hope you’ll have a look. Let’s get back into this episode. So yeah, how do you think this progresses from here? So when we’re talking about care at home, how do we get to there from where we are? What are the next things that you think are going to happen?
Dr. Aaron Massecar (17:18):
There’s some really interesting technologies that are starting to come in computer vision and being able to analyze the gate of an animal in kind of an ambient device. So there’s some interesting stuff like that. Usually when I talk with veterinarians about it, there’s a certain level of skepticism like, well, I don’t really know if that’s actually real or what that, and it’s like, well, it’s not meant to be a diagnostic device. It’s meant to be a screening device. So I think part of it is finding the positioning that is going to be effective both from a company perspective and from a veterinarian perspective in order to bridge that divide. And that’s where I really do encourage those companies to talk about it as screening and not as diagnostics because the moment we say diagnostics and you’ve got some definitiveness rather than it being an early detection device.
(18:10):
So I think part of it is just developing the appropriate language around it. Another part of it is that there’s a major challenge for a lot of these companies because they want to work with veterinarians, but they don’t really know how to access. So they’re going to Dr. Jones down the street. And Dr. Jones is like, I don’t have time for this. Why would you bother me with it? So the development of something like a community of early adopters, this happens in large corporations all the time where they find these pilot sites. But for community members to self-identify as like, I’m really interested in solving a problem related to cardiology. Show me the companies that are doing something in cardiology. I want to know more about that. So there’s a certain level of matchmaker-ness that has to happen in that area that currently doesn’t really exist. Yeah and I think through those two things, there’s going to be the perception, at least the perception of more value for some of these companies. But for the most part, most of these companies, they’ll try to work with a veterinarian and the veterinarians like, Matt, I don’t have time. And then they’ll be like, all right, direct to consumer, right?
(19:25):
I’m going to bypass it.
Dr. Andy Roark (19:26):
Sure. Well, the veterans don’t know about bringing technology products to market. It’s not their thing. And yeah, I could definitely see that sort of failure to failure to launch. I like your idea, and I think you’re probably right about a lot of this getting rolled up into the term screening over being something that is marketed to veterinarians as diagnostic. Because I just started thinking about it. I’m like, okay, we’ll be the driver for this because usually there needs to be a driver. I can a hundred percent imagine Amazon pets coming up with an app where you record your pet walking and running and it gets crunched by AI and it comes back and says, Hey, I’m worried about your pet’s hips. I think you should go to the veterinarian and get checked out. The hope being that the veterinarian will say, yes, you’ve got some arthritis in these hips, some osteoarthritis, maybe some early hip dysplasia, and we need to get you onto a joint supplement or osteoarthritis medications or something that you would want to get on autoship that the company that had the app could help you do.
(20:40):
If you’ve already got our app, you’re probably buying from us. And so I can a hundred percent see drivers like that pushing those screening tools, and again, going to the pet editor and saying, do this, do this video. We’ll raise some flags and then you can go and ask your vet specific questions and it’s good for your pet, it’s good for you to know what’s going on. And also it’s probably going to be good for me because you’re going to come back and buy products from me based on the information you get. And so all of that stuff kind of makes sense. I got to note, so as are the head of the Veterinary Innovation Council, do people ever come to you with ideas and you’re just like, that’s a terrible idea. You don’t have to tell me who don’t want no examples. But again, I’m a little bit cynical about innovation in general. We also say innovation, and then people are like, look, I’ve got a water bottle that screams when it’s empty. And I’m like, that’s a terrible, who wants that? There’s people who love babies. I don’t know.
Dr. Aaron Massecar (21:42):
There’s water bottles… just peeking into your brain a little bit…Just going to close that door back down.
Dr. Andy Roark (21:52):
Exactly. Yeah, I’ve got million dollar ideas. I’ll tell you what, I’ve got a lot of ideas.
Dr. Aaron Massecar (21:59):
It happens all the time. And some of them are interesting and some of ’em are like, there might be some sort of medical application for what you’re talking about, but I cannot provide you with any guidance. Right? And then some of ’em are just like, it’s just not innovation, right? So I try to help people understand that there’s a difference between true innovation, which is disruptive innovation, which people use that term all the time, and what that actually means in a genuine sense. And then there’s stuff that’s solving a problem, but maybe it’s not super innovative, but it actually does solve a problem and nobody else is solving that problem. And that’s okay, but don’t pitch a product that you think just a bunch of examples that are rolling around in the back of my head, but that you think is really innovative and you want to call it innovation when it just, it’s solves a problem, contextualize it appropriately.
(22:58):
So yeah, people come forward all the time. For the most part, I’m able to help them because we’re a nonprofit, we’re not investing in any of these companies or anything like that. My currency is information more than it is dollars. And so just trying to figure out who’s doing what and where and how can I help them? Because yeah, some put together a pitch for the innovation summit and they want to exhibit there and they’re like, this is really innovative. I’m like, this isn’t really the place for you going to a VMX startup circles, that’s the place for you because you’re solving a real problem for real veterinarians and sell the product that way, but don’t talk about it as though it’s revolutionary.
Dr. Andy Roark (23:39):
Yeah. So in your mind, when you talk about innovation, is there always a significant technology component to it? Is that kind of the line is for you? I hear it totally what you’re saying, and there’s a lot of things that I really like and impressed with that they’re super simple, and I’m trying to think of an example off the cuff, but basically are ways to solve problems that don’t involve radical new technology. They’re just, oh, this person has thought about this in a different way and blah, blah, blah. I mean, I’ll give you an example. So the company that I run is called Uncharted. And so we do boutique conferences and they’re very much workshop based in a way that when we launched six years ago was you did not see that other places. And again, you’re not going to hurt my feelings. In your mind, is that innovation or would you say No, that’s a very real, it is a great solution to a problem that people had about different ways that we learn and things like that. So yeah, would you classify that as innovation? And if not, where does it differ what is required to be innovation?
Dr. Aaron Massecar (24:43):
Yeah, I don’t necessarily think of it as kind of an on off switch, but in that case, I would say you’re offering an innovative take on a preexisting model. And so is it true innovation in the sense that you are matrix plugging into people’s brains and offering them new skills? But that would be an unrealistic expectation for anything but saying it’s an innovative take on something that pre-exists. Yeah. Is it true innovation? Is it true disruption? It’s not disruption, right? Disruption would be a fundamental change in the way in which people experience these things, but it’s innovative, right? Yeah,
Dr. Andy Roark (25:26):
No, that makes sense. Okay. And that totally fits. I was just trying to figure out where the line is in innovative ideas versus an innovation, and that does make sense. Alright, I like all of that. When we start to look around and we are looking, we’ve talked a lot about products that would come to market and what that looks like and where consumers interface with that. Is there anything that you are super excited about when you think about innovation? You’re like, oh man, this is the thing that I hope happens or this is the thing when I get out of bed in the morning, I’m like, oh man, maybe today somebody will come with this idea. This is going to be huge. Is there anything that gets you fired up?
Dr. Aaron Massecar (26:09):
So there’s two things. So one exists, and then the other one I want to exist, and I’m not really sure if it’s going to exist, but the one that exists already, there’s a lot of people who are providing innovative PIMS. And so there’s companies out there who have ambient listening devices where they will just listen to the conversation that you have with the client and turn that into the medical record and use decision support in order to provide you with a possible treatment plan. And so you just go in and you’re like, yep, yep, yep, nope, nope. Done. And your record is done. So there’s that kind of stuff that I think is absolutely needed when I would watch it. So my wife is a vet and when I would watch her come home from work and just sit down and be like, yeah, I’ll be with you in an hour.
(26:56):
I’ve got to finish my notes. And I’m like, and she would pull up her little post-it notes and then turn those into the record. And I’m like, that’s insane. So changing that model, anything that provides veterinarians with more time and is less of like a, well, if you just did this, then you could have this other service, right? No more boltons, save veterinarians time in the clinic. Anything that does that I’m really excited about. But the thing that I would really love to see is a fundamental new model of education. The way in which we educate people is based on a 15th century model of scarcity of information and not at all in line with contemporary research on learning. We don’t even teach people how to learn. We teach learning incidental to the process itself. And so some of the AI models that are coming out utilizing veterinary education as kind of the background are super interesting and they’re way more engaging than lecture format.
(27:58):
Lecture is not the fact that you were using workshops already points to you recognize that there is a need in the market for engagement with people that wasn’t just like, listen to me lecture at you for an hour at a time. And that’s called the Generation Effect. So you’re listening the generation effect in the individuals. And so the retention of that is much longer, and yet we don’t focus on these things. So there’s like 10 to 12 facts that we have about learning that are not being deployed currently. And that needs to change because I genuinely believe that that is actually the root of the majority of the issues that we have in Vet Med. Everything from wellness and burnout and all of that. If we taught people appropriately and taught people how to teach people appropriately, I think a lot of those issues would just be gone.
Dr. Andy Roark (28:49):
I heard recently one of the brand new vet schools that open up, it may be Arizona, they don’t quote me on that. Their students will not have any lectures. They don’t have lecture, and that’s not how they’re trained at all in vet school. Everything is case-based and sort of workshop-based. And I had to sit down and think about that for a minute because again, I have my own beliefs about the lecture is as someone who does a lot of lectures and I enjoy lectures and I can tell a good story and I have a lot of fun, but I did start Uncharted because I do think that when we get into types of learning people, they want to work on their own stuff and they want to talk about their own things and they need to process it, they need to talk it through, they need to reflect back on lessons learned and things they’ve tried.
(29:42):
And there’s all of those sorts of things that don’t tend to happen when we just sort of sit in a lesson lecture and maybe jot some notes down. But for the most part, we’re just kind of taking this information. We know that people retain about 10% of what you tell ’em, but if you give ’em a project, I make ’em work on it. They retain a lot more. And so I’m totally with you on that. I think that that’s exciting. That’s what we’ve bought into in Uncharted. I think the idea of using artificial intelligence stuff to come up with new ways to learn. I think that’s super fascinating. Aaron, I could talk to you all day, man. I really appreciate your time. I appreciate you being here. If somebody is like, man, this whole veterinary innovation thing space is just new to me and I would like to know more about, I geek out on technology and medicine and how do I even learn about what’s going on? How do I know more about this area? Where would you point ’em?
Dr. Aaron Massecar (30:36):
Number one place, not to compete with your conference, but the Veterinary Innovation Summit, that’s where a lot of that stuff gets shared. I’m going to be publishing more of this on LinkedIn, so recommend that you follow me on LinkedIn. The Veterinary Innovation Council, our website, we just did a refresh, and so we’re starting to develop more content that we’re going to be putting on there. But there’s fun places. Like mydogisarobot.com. Oh really? Okay. Check on it. Yeah. So my dog is a robot.com and the guy puts up all sorts of directing consumer products. So it’s interesting to see what he’s got in there. Yeah, those are some of the main spaces that I would look at. There’s so much out there. If you are a conference junkie, the two of us definitely go to the Consumer Electronic Show, CES. It’s unbelievable the amount of stuff that exists at that conference that has applications to that med, but most people don’t know. And then the Healthcare Information Management System Society.
Dr. Andy Roark (31:46):
That sounds like a party.
Dr. Aaron Massecar (31:48):
Oh yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark (31:49):
The Healthcare Management Information Systems Summit
Dr. Aaron Massecar (31:52):
Healthcare Information Management Systems Society. They really have to do some rebranding,
Dr. Andy Roark (32:00):
Some Healthcare Information Management Systems Society.
Dr. Aaron Massecar (32:04):
That’s it.
Dr. Andy Roark (32:05):
No? Okay. Is it really? Okay, alright.
Dr. Aaron Massecar (32:09):
Everything digital health on the human side is there. And so when you go to a conference like that and you start talking to companies like GE or Zimmer Biomet, like Zimmer Biome has this implantable knee that has wifi capability that will measure stride length and all of these other parameters. And you’re like, have you ever thought about VetNet? And they’re like, no, no I haven’t. So if you’re a budding entrepreneur, you just go these conferences, talk to people and say, look, I could launch your vet med division. Or a lot of companies will say, we’ve wanted to get into it. We know that it would be a really good proving ground and all of this stuff. We just don’t have the resources to do it. Going to these places and saying, I’m interested in talking with you about it, it’s unbelievable how quickly you get some traction.
Dr. Andy Roark (32:59):
Yeah, I’m still, I’m sorry, I didn’t hear what you just said. I was thinking about my dog’s knee attaching to the wifi and I was like, I don’t even know what that means. My knee attaches to the wifi. How does that even
Dr. Aaron Massecar (33:14):
Magic!
Dr. Andy Roark (33:15):
I’ll be like, “Look, kids, you’re bogging down the network. Unplug the dog’s knee.” Okay. Alright. That’s enough of that. Aaron, thank you so much for being here, buddy. I really, I thoroughly enjoy you. Thanks for doing Let’s do this again. For sure. I’ll put links, I’ll put links to all the events that you mentioned and the Vet Innovation Council and my dog is a robot and you on LinkedIn so people can see what you’re writing about.
Dr. Aaron Massecar (33:40):
That’s awesome. Thanks for the opportunity, Andy.
Dr. Andy Roark (33:42):
Oh man, I love it guys, thanks for being here and listening to everybody take care of yourselves. And that’s our show. That’s what I got for you guys. I hope you enjoy it. I hope you got some the out of it. Thanks to Aaron for being here. Check out the Veterinary Innovation Council. Consider going to the Vet Innovation Summit. If you haven’t been to it, it is a neat little gathering. I have not been, I want to go, it always lands on a concept for me. One day I’m going to go and I’m going to check it out. So anyway, but I continue to hear great things about it. So alright team, I will see you guys later on. Take yourselves.
