Animal Health Unit (AHU) in the Department of Environment is responsible for delivering animal health and welfare programs across Yukon to support enforcement of the Animal Health Act and the Animal Protection and Control Act. As part of this program delivery, veterinarians in the branch provide veterinary services for both companion and livestock animals. This service delivery requires that veterinarians collect personal information from animal owners in order to create health records, prescribe and dispense medications, submit specimens for diagnostic testing and to follow up on cases. These services are generally provided under two programs in the AHU: the Community Dog Care Initiative and the Livestock Veterinary Services Program.
Until this time, veterinarians in the branch have used forms created in-house to collect animal and owner information. These forms have been digitized and saved in the AHU G:/drive. However, this system does not allow for records to be easily searched, does not allow for efficient case follow-up, or for data to be easily extracted for program review and evaluation purposes. A cloud-based veterinary practice management (VPM) software would allow AHU to collect, store, access and evaluate program data more accurately and securely and replace the need for the existing paper forms.
