Meet Cerys Goodall, Chief Operating Office at Veterinary Telehealth Platform: Vetster

Vetster is the world’s fastest growing veterinary telehealth platform connecting licensed veterinarians with pet owners via on-demand video vet appointments. It serves pet owners in Canada, the US and the UK.

Our platform – which serves more than 20 animal species – empowers veterinarians to build a virtual care practice, while helping pet owners to access care where and when needed. We believe virtual care is a great addition to in-clinic needs and helps to improve the continuum of care pets receive and that vets can provide.
 
 

 

How did the idea of Vetster come about?

 
Vetster was created out of the intersection of two major trends, meeting a critical time in the market. Pet adoption has been consistently on the rise, spiking during the pandemic, with up to 70% of households now owning a pet. At the same time, the pandemic put human telehealth into the social consciousness as a viable way to provide health services. In the veterinary space, there is a critical shortage of care available. A crisis that is not expected to reach its peak until 2040.

To address this critical need, Mark Bordo and Regan Johnson, our founders and marketplace experts, created Vetster to increase access to care, to give veterinarians a new way to practise and help improve pet health outcomes. As a marketplace, licensed veterinarians create their virtual practice, setting their own rates and availability. This gives pet owners choice. They can select from more than 4,000 veterinary professionals in the US, Canada and the UK based on species, pricing, availability as well as our reviews.

Veterinarians using Vetster serve more than 20 pet species across a wide range of needs including teletriage, tummy troubles, allergies, nutrition, life-stage guidance, minor bumps and bruises, and all of the pet care questions in between in-clinic appointments.
 

How has Vetster evolved over the last couple of years?

 
Vetster launched in November 2020 in Canada and the US. We quickly established availability in every province and state to serve any pet owner at any time, no matter where they were located. The success was certainly bolstered by the pandemic, providing a critical service to pet owners while also giving veterinarians a way to see animals that didn’t need to be in-clinic or weren’t able to travel.

During that time our business grew and raised its Series B round, bringing our total funding to $40M USD to date.

Recently, Vetster entered the UK market, with licensed veterinarians to serve pet owners across the country. We’ve been expanding since that time, helping the country’s 59% of pet owners who are seeking convenient, digital solutions that can be easily incorporated into their busy lives, while letting them prioritise their pet’s care.
 

What can we hope to see from Vetster in the future?

 
We want to create solutions that make it easy for pet parents to take care of their pets, through expert veterinary care. Our platform will continue to innovate in our electronic medical health record to give both the pet owner and the veterinarian a more detailed ongoing view of the animal’s health across its medical, nutrition and other lifestyle factors.

At the same time, we’ll be expanding our partnerships to improve our overall services. In the US, for example, we partnered with PetMeds, the leading online pet pharmacy, to make it even easier for pet parents to obtain the treatment their pet needs. Through the partnership prescriptions, over-the-counter medications can be recommended, purchased and shipped directly to the pet owner’s home.

These seamless solutions are changing how pet care is provided and making it much easier for pet owners to obtain the care they need for their animals.