The world of veterinary medicine has significantly smaller margins than human medicine. Companies within this sector have to be tremendously cost effective in order to meaningful contribute to veterinary operations.

Innovations in technology and internet accessibilty have created opportunities for some software companies to make a meaningful impact in the areas of operations and workflow. One such company is Advanced Technology Corp (www.vetstar.com).

VADDS LIMS by Advanced Technology Corp is one of the most intuitive and comprehensive approaches towards solving the problems of the veterinary world.

Advanced Technology Corp has been servicing the industry through its products VADDS and Vetstar. VADDS has the distinction of being the world’s most widely used veterinary specific LIMS. Vetstar is the “longest-running multi-clinic Veterinary Practice Management Software.”

Year over year, Advanced Technology expands its client base in North America and beyond. Advanced Technology Corp specializes in different sectors such as veterinary teaching universities, multi-practice veterinary clinics, equine clinics, public / governmental veterinary laboratories, commerical veterinary labs and zoos.

Advanced Technology Corp is a leader in veterinary Lab Information Management Systems. An enterprise LIMS system (such as VADDS) handles every aspect of laboratory operations. This includes allowing clients to pre-accesion cases; laboratory staff to record samples and test requests; technicians to interact with instrumentation for running tests; reports to be generated and invoices to be sent. Quality control and data visualization / dashboards are other features that are commonly used as well. VADDS is presently in use in over 50 different veterinary laboratories on five continents.

Advanced Technology Corp was founded back in 1984. VADDS has been continually developed and marketed since 1991. Every month new features are rolled out based on on-site review of operations and client requested refinements. Yet, the design of the software is not necessarily the true strength of VADDS. The President of Advanced Technology Corp explains, “Anyone can copy your software or reverse engineer your software within a few months. It may or not work well, but they’ll add some graphics and nice end UI touches and bring it to market at a higher price. What they cannot do, what they cannot replicate, is subject matter expertise.”

This is a very valuable perspective. Advanced Technology Corp staff have personally visited and reviewed operations of over 100 veterinary hospitals and laboratories in dozens of countries in vastly different cultures and contexts. ATC has distributors and partners in SE Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. ATC is uniquely dedicated to serving the veterinary sector.

Apart from solving the issues of the veterinary world, ATC is working in association with top epidemiologists of renowned universities to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

Veterinary LIMS implementations face strenuous challenges due to diminished budgets. This is a trend that is very likely to continue if not accelerate as governments brace for revenue shortfalls in the coming years. It is critical for labs to be successful in implementating a new LIMS system. However, this isn’t possible without proper planning. Some of the greater challenges that LIMS has been facing in today’s time include

• Lack of understanding for the requirement of resources
• Lack of goals
• Lack of training and supervision by the leading members

Advanced Technology Corp leverages its decades of experience to help labs avoid these pitfalls through a “comprehensive and intuitive approach.” Staff understand not just the immediate requirement entering tests results and producing a professional looking report. They are also well versed in meeting various accreditiation requirements whether these be AAVLD, NATA, A2LA or ISO.

Explaining how VADDS assists laboratories in meeting new requirements, Elaine Bergamini, the product manager, said, “A key innovation that we brought to the market is our VADDS Messenger tool. The US government requires certain data from all public veterinary labs in order to evaluate what is happening with certain epizootic diseases. The average lab was saddled with technical requirements far beyond its IT resources in order to be in compliance. We built a tool based on the simplest manner for exchanging data and are able to roll changes to over twenty labs in minutes. A lot of times, the greatest value we can bring is in understanding what our clients need and how they work. VADDS is a simple tool that empowers them to do their work seamlessly.”

For the veterinary world, VADDS acts as a powerful solution. The current technology stack includes a web-based user interface. The user interface engine has no direct connection with the database. All updates are done via API calls. Laboratories with dedicated IT staff are able to build their own dashboards and data visualization tools. Data handling adheres to the highest level of security requirements. Advanced Technology Corp is committed to helping all kinds of institutions, in terms of their needs, whether cloud-based or locally installed

Advanced Technology Corp takes great pride in having VADDS recognized as the “longest-running commercially available veterinary diagnostic LIMS system” worldwide. Key features of VADDS inclue the following:

• Availability of cloud-based and local servers
• Enterprise level availability
• Extensive and customizable reporting solutions (fax, email, electronic data transfer, etc.)
• State of the art user-end interface
• Over 60 different instrument interfaces
• Enhanced and flexible permission security
• Unlimited customization

With the Covid-19 outbreak a number of new challenges have arisen. A number of university veterinary labs are now involved in human coronavirus testing. The rollouts have been exceedingly challenging. Goal have been set and reset daily. To tackle this issue, ATC rolled out VADDS COVID LIMS. This system married all of the robust veterinary feature set of VADDS with features specifically designed for HIPAA, FERPA and other regulations. The entire roll out was coordinated within weeks.

One of the key areas of interest within COVID VADDS is data. In reflecting on this, Bove added, “The most important thing to bear in mind is that data always has a context. The key issues we see with coronavirus reporting is that journalists and public officials are simply not taking the time to critically understand what the data represents. People who test positive for coronavirus are typically retested multiple times until they have so many non detected results. It is presented that the US has over 6.5 million positive coronavirus cases. That is not medically correct… there are 6.5 million instances of tests having results indicating a positive result. To understand the caseloads or population statistics the data has to be normalized based upon individuals.”

With the current coronavirus pandemic, ATC is honored to contribute technology are reporting for the sake of its university clients. This data will be used to help universities evaluate whether or not to offer in-person classes, determine the efficacy of their surveillance and ideally contribute to robust decision making.

Concluding his thoughts on the role of software in the veterinary world, Bove said, “The value of a software company is no longer measured in intellectual property. Instead, it is found in the company’s ability to be a meaningful partner in a constantly evolving world where veterinary and human medicine are understood to be increasingly intertwined.”

According to Bove and Bergamini, ATC thrives on leading in the network of veterinary laboratories and hospitals throughout North America. It also has plans of extension across the world to serve animals and mankind better with VADDS, Vetstar and other software and services.