Maintenance software for veterinary practices and hospitals: every device with its service firm and no patient data

What fails in a veterinary centre

It is best walked through area by area, because each has its own urgency. On the wards temperature rules: air conditioning that stops cooling or heating that cuts out affects animals fresh from surgery, and exotics more than any. Then come the kennel doors and latches, the infusion pumps, the heat pads, the oxygen and the water.

In theatre and sterilisation, the lamp, the table, the anaesthesia machine, the monitor, the suction unit, the medical gases, the UPS that ought to ride out a power cut and the autoclave, without which there are no instruments for the next operation. In diagnostics, the X-ray unit, the ultrasound scanner and the laboratory analysers. And in the part the public sees, what any premises have: the automatic door, the scales in the waiting room, the taps, the lights, the grooming bath.

The one who notices is the nurse on the night shift, the vet about to take a radiograph, the receptionist. None has time or hands to spare: they are wearing gloves, holding an animal or have an owner waiting.

Device by device: who sees it and who gets called

Nine rows, nine phone numbers. That is the trait of the sector: there is no maintenance department to hand everything to, but a list of specialists, each with their device.

Each piece of equipment, with its official service

Clinical equipment is not for just anyone to touch. The autoclave, the anaesthesia machine or the X-ray unit is repaired by the manufacturer or an authorised service, often under contract and with agreed response times. That has two consequences when choosing a tool. First, the report has to reach that service with what it needs to come prepared: which unit, in which room, what code is on screen, a photo. Second, it is in your interest to be able to check the contract's times with your own data and not only the supplier's.

X-ray has paperwork of its own as well. Spain's regulation on diagnostic X-ray includes veterinary use: it asks for a certificate of conformity every two years, radiation monitoring at least yearly and keeping the verification certificates after any repair to the unit. That archive is yours and your service firm's. A reporting tool does not replace it, though it does help to have someone remind you of the dates; which tools do so is compared in software for mandatory inspections, and the general list for premises in Spain is in the calendar of mandatory inspections.

No owners and no patients in the report

A veterinary centre handles owners' personal data and each animal's clinical record, and that lives in the practice management system. A fault needs none of it. The autoclave technician only has to know which machine it is and what is wrong with it; the name of the dog in kennel four is no help and should not travel down a maintenance channel.

Ask any tool to tell you which fields are mandatory in a report and what happens if somebody writes too much. And agree a simple rule with the team on day one: room and equipment, never names. It is easier to keep when the report is a photo of the thermostat than when something has to be written out.

Six questions for a veterinary centre's demo

• Can you report with one hand? A photo of the error or a voice note. With gloves on and an animal on the table nobody fills in a form.
• Does each report go to its service firm without anyone looking up the number? Show your list of suppliers and ask to be told how it gets loaded.
• What happens at three in the morning with the air conditioning on the ward? Whom it wakes, and whom it does not wake over a light bulb.
• What does the official service have to do to receive it? If it needs to register in your system, do not count on it.
• Does it keep equipment certificates and records, or only the faults? Knowing beforehand saves you from running two archives without meaning to.
• And if we are several centres? Ask whether they are seen together or apart, and whether everyone's data compares.

When a full CMMS is worth it in veterinary care

It is worth it in a large hospital or in a group that wants to govern its equipment the way a human hospital does: a record for each device with its serial number, contract and warranty, an inspection calendar per unit, a history of interventions and spares, and a dashboard for purchasing to compare suppliers across centres. That is a CMMS with a clinical-engineering bent, and it demands somebody to keep it up to date. How it is approached in human healthcare is covered in maintenance software for clinics.

It is too much for the neighbourhood practice with two consulting rooms, one theatre and eight suppliers. There the inventory fits on a sheet of twenty lines and the real problem comes earlier: the nurse being able to report in ten seconds and the right technician finding out. Between one extreme and the other there are more options, described in maintenance software and, for what is purely repair, in fault management software.

Bedel in a veterinary practice: what it does and what it does not

Bedel carries the fault from the moment someone sees it until it is closed, and nothing more: it is not a CMMS. The centre has a WhatsApp number. The staff you sign up (vets, nurses, reception) write to it when something fails: “the autoclave is showing error E4”, with the photo of the screen, or a voice note from the ward. Out of that comes a ticket with a number and a time.

The ticket goes to the supplier you have assigned to that kind of fault: climate to the air-conditioning technician, the autoclave to its official service, the oxygen to the gas company. Each receives it on their everyday WhatsApp, with no app and no sign-up, and replies from there. The reporter knows when it is accepted and when it is fixed, without having to ask. Whatever you mark as urgent (theatre without power, wards without climate control) rings the on-call phone at any hour of the night. If the deadline you gave that category passes with nobody responding, the report goes up to management.

Everything ends up in an Excel file with three times per fault: report, acceptance and closure. Sorted by supplier, it is the figure you take to the review of a service contract. And once a month, whoever is in charge of maintenance receives on WhatsApp the reminder of the dated inspections you have loaded, X-ray among them.

What it does not do:

• It does not store X-ray certificates or the records of the autoclave or other equipment: they stay in your archive.
• It keeps no device records or inventory, and no work orders with parts, hours and costs.
• It does not connect to the practice management system and does not see appointments, clinical records or billing.
• It does not take messages from owners: only the staff on the list write.
• It does not delete on its own a name somebody types into a report; that is why you agree not to put them in.
• It does not bring several centres together on one screen: each practice is one account, with its own number and Excel file.
• It is not a channel for clinical emergencies: those go through your protocol.

Data is stored in the European Union. The product page is incidents in veterinary clinics and the general one, incident management on WhatsApp.