An Ontario startup has an idea to help address Canada’s veterinarian shortage.
The company, VETSon, hopes that by bringing veterinary practices more digital, they might lessen the burden on those practices and make services available to more farmers. Their artificial intelligence-powered virtual healthcare platform, launched by father-son team Glen and Colin Yates, is designed to let veterinarians service more clients and give more animal owners access to care.
The Canadian Veterinary Medical Association now expects 5,000 job openings between 2022 and 2031, and only 4,300 applicants to fill them.
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“I grew up watching the challenges in the veterinary industry, especially with the growing shortage of vets in rural areas, so we’ve developed a tool to help veterinary practices cover as many calls as efficiently as possible,” said Colin Yates.
This includes an e-commerce tool where farmers can order livestock medicine directly from their clinic through the app. The product is delivered to the farm. This increases convenience for the farmer, who doesn’t have to work around clinic office hours, and saves the vet from additional paperwork or drop-off on the farm.
Vet clinics sign on to the VETSon service and provide clients with a login. Farmers can then access their veterinarian’s practice digitally, including telemedicine visits and virtual locum services to fill temporary gaps.
Revenue is shared between VETSon and the veterinary practice. There is no change in pricing for farmers if a clinic is using the service, said Yates.
The first practice trialled was his dad’s practice, Slant Road Mobile Veterinary Services.
The younger Yates provides strategic support and helps developers understand the veterinary industry’s needs, with the goal of having technology that is easy for vets and farmers to use.
Response from farmers has been “overwhelming,” with farms from northern British Columbia to Cape Breton trying to access the remote service. The company is actively pursuing expansion across Canada to meet demand.
“We are a revenue-generating company now and we are starting to get traction with clinics. It’s a conservative industry, but we’ve made a conscious effort to work with the College of Veterinarians of Ontario and other regulatory bodies in Canada to give them updates,” Yates says.
“We aren’t trying to work around vet clinics. We are about supporting veterinarians.”
VETSon is also turning heads in the innovation space. It is a graduate of Creative Destruction Lab’s supply chain stream startup program in Montreal and a member of the current cohort of ag-tech startups at Cultivator, an innovation hub based in Saskatchewan led by Conexus Credit Union. VETSon has also been part of Ontario business growth group RH Accelerator since 2022.
“When you’re a startup, it’s all about networking on various levels. These programs help you gain information to educate yourself on how to raise money and practice pitching. That’s an art in itself,” said Yates. “Potential investors can help us scale faster; this is a global issue.”
Most recently, VETSon presented to the European Union’s Working Party of Chief Veterinary Officers, who asked the company to share how it uses telemedicine to ease veterinary strain.
In two years, the company hopes to have an established footprint across Canada, with a global presence in five years.
