To: All members of the Veterinary Future Society
Fm: Rolan Tripp
Re: Future of Veterinary Medicine in the Information Age
I’m traveling tomorrow to the 2018 Veterinary Innovation Summit in Texas. If you are going and a Veterinary Future Society Member, please introduce yourself.
Part of the program is broken out into small groups and I am delighted to have VIDI104 for 90 minutes (see below). My proposal is that this VIS group act as a sounding board for developing a “Model Certification for Global TeleVeterinary Practice.” Whatever useful that comes out of this (if anything) can be made available to state boards, other countries, and anyone else with the power to potentially regulate TeleVeterinary Medicine. Those that cannot attend are invited to join the Veterinary Future Society for an online ongoing discussion.
The premise is that a TeleVeterinary Exam is not the same thing as a Clinical Veterinary Exam and should be regulated independently. I will argue that in some cases a TeleExam is preferable. Important questions remain:
- Definitions of terms: e.g. TeleHealth; TeleMedicine; TeleVeterinary; TeleConsult; TeleExam; TeleAnything
- How is the public protected from charlatans? What hammer might fall? From who?
- When can “legend drugs” appropriately be prescribed? Controlled meds?
- Is it acceptable to “Operate under the VCPR of a local attending DVM?”
- Is a veterinary degree required? From ANY vet school?
- What about Veterinary Nurses? Other Veterinary related professionals?
- What kind of record keeping is required? What kind of privacy requirements?
- How much transparency?
When developing proposed guidelines, the members of the discussion should be unbiased. Someone who puts aside their personal biases (even if temporarily) and operates from the position of, “what is best when equally valuing everyone in the world” is a Globalist. Our discussion will add back in a declared bias hence the term “TeleVeterinary.” What we need at this meeting are, “TeleVeterinary Globalists!”
