VitusVet Helps Veterinary Practices Ensure Quality Pet Care

“Having this live two-way communication enabled through PubNub has been a game changer for veterinary practices, because it helps veterinarians solve problems in real time.” Adam Wysocki, SVP of Product and Engineering at VitusVet

Meet VitusVet

Founded in 2013 by a practicing veterinarian, VitusVet connects pet owners with their care providers to improve the health and safety of pets. VitusVet was originally built as an app to allow pet owners to carry their pets' medical records with them on their phones. From there, they have evolved into a client-engagement platform that provides a modern way for veterinary practices to quickly and efficiently manage their day-to-day operations.

Their platform helps veterinary practices manage daily tasks at maximum efficiency and strengthen customer communication with features like appointment and prescription refill reminders, two-way texting, real-time updates while pets are receiving care, and check-in notifications. 

As a way to enable this reliable, real-time communication between veterinary practices and pet owners, VitusVet relies on PubNub. 

Saving three months of development time 

Before the launch of their Connect app, which allows vets and pet owners to communicate, VitusVet recognized that building real-time notifications at scale in-house would require substantial resources and dev time. To ensure a quicker time to market, VitusVet turned to PubNub to power their app’s real-time updates and notifications to pet owners—reducing their development time by three months.

“We were able to quickly integrate the PubNub SDK into our applications and serve up a highly valuable and needed feature for our customers,” said Adam Wysocki, SVP of Product and Engineering at VitusVet. Now with PubNub, Wysocki’s dev team can easily add new features and updates without having to build from the ground up, which helps to curb costs and ensure that essential engineering time can be spent on other important projects and developments. 

“If we were to try and create our own in-house system for real-time notifications that can scale, we would have needed additional staff for the development of this product,” said Wysocki. “I would say PubNub has saved us a whole engineer and three months of downtime.” 

Improving the quality of pet care with live in-app updates and notifications 

VitusVet uses PubNub for real-time updates and notifications from their VitusVet Connect app. With VitusVet, veterinarians can send live in-app updates from the exam room to pet owners while pets are undergoing care at the veterinary practice. 

For veterinarians, having this real-time connection with customers is vital for improving patient outcomes. “Having this live two-way communication enabled through PubNub has been a game changer for veterinary practices, because it helps veterinarians solve problems in real time,” said Wysocki. Using these live in-app updates, veterinary practices can seamlessly communicate with pet owners to address emergency care, discuss medical records, and provide immediate responses to help reduce stress. Ultimately, offering veterinarians a way to proactively engage with customers helps ensure that pets receive more personal care since they are able to easily coordinate with pet owners. 

Their platform also makes it easy for veterinary practices to streamline their day-to-day operations by enabling customers to use curbside check-in. Through their app’s real-time features, veterinary staff are notified once customers have arrived for their appointment using check-in and drop-off notifications. For veterinary staff, this helps keep practices running smoothly, especially during busy office hours. “Being able to get instant notifications from pet owners to automate check-in saves vets a lot of time and grows our product adoption,” said Wysocki. 

Ever since implementing these real-time capabilities through PubNub, VitusVet has been able to offer veterinary practices a reliable, real-time communication mechanism that improves the overall efficiency of their daily operations without compromising quality care. 

Providing peace of mind for pet owners 

Additionally with VitusVet, pet owners have the ability to quickly and easily manage their pets’ healthcare and communicate directly with their veterinarian practice through real-time updates and notifications on their platform. 

“PubNub’s easy-to-implement solution gives us the ability to power real-time updates and notifications at scale,” said Wysocki. Through their app’s real-time updates, pet owners are now able to gain visibility into their pet’s check-up. For instance, while pets are under care, veterinarians can provide pet owners with live in-app updates about the exam, any treatment that occurs, and direct them to the appropriate next steps. These real-time updates are especially important during surgeries or in emergency situations, giving pet owners full transparency into what is happening during their pets’ treatment. As a result, pet owners have the knowledge they need to make the best decisions for their pets' health and wellness, which helps provide peace of mind for customers. 

Since the pandemic, pet owners have also found these real-time updates and curbside check-in notifications to be especially important for maintaining safety measures. “With PubNub, we’re able to maintain a high level of service to our end users, especially during COVID-19,” said Wysocki. 

This reliable two-way communication provides a convenient way for pet owners to safely notify their veterinary provider when they have arrived, which allows them to take part in contactless appointments. “PubNub’s platform helps facilitate this contactless system of operations to treat pets, and have everybody remain safe and healthy across hundreds of veterinary practices,” said Wysocki. 

Operating reliably for hundreds of veterinary practices 

Today, VitusVet is able to support hundreds of veterinary practices at scale. And as they continue to grow, they trust that PubNub’s Support teams can provide knowledgeable insights and solutions they need to successfully innovate their product offering. 

“PubNub is incredibly responsive to our needs. Whenever we have any kind of question or updates that we have to make, PubNub quickly provides us with answers and solutions,” said Wysocki. “We are confident that we can continue to evolve our platform with PubNub.” 

If you‘re looking for a reliable and scalable solution that can help you deliver high-quality care, get in touch with our team of experts.