Helm to launch a new category in veterinary practice technology at London Vet Show

A proper home for the work around care

We started Helm because we know veterinary practice.

Between the three of us, we've spent a lot of time building veterinary practices, building technology and dealing with the messy operational problems that come with both.

And veterinary practices are messy places.

Not because people are doing a bad job. Quite the opposite. Practices are full of clever people constantly finding ways to make things work. The problem is that many of the tools we use were never really designed around how veterinary teams actually work.

The PMS quite rightly looks after the clinical record and the core running of the practice. Around it, though, sits an enormous amount of communication and operational work.

Who is dealing with this? Has someone called that client? Where is the current SOP? Did everybody see that update? What did we decide about that case? Who is following this up? What happened with that complaint?

Helm gives that work somewhere to live.

The Helm Hub brings together discussions, chat, broadcasts, follow-ups, tasks, know-how and veterinary workflows. Know-how becomes a live operating manual for the practice, rather than another folder full of SOPs that everybody hopes somebody has read.

The Helm Sidecar sits alongside the PMS, bringing Helm into the place where people are already working rather than asking them to disappear into yet another system.

And the Helm mobile app means the important bits of practice life do not stop being accessible simply because somebody has stepped away from a computer.

Underneath all of this is what we think is one of the really interesting parts of Helm: context.

Clinical records are in the PMS. Conversations might be in WhatsApp or email. Policies are in folders. Tasks are on bits of paper. Quite a lot of knowledge is simply in somebody’s head. Helm is designed to bring the right people, information, practice knowledge and outside guidance together around the piece of work that is actually being done.

That also makes AI much more useful.

We are not interested in adding AI because it is fashionable, or in asking it to make decisions that should be made by people. Helm's friendly AI works with the context around the job. It can help find information, bring things together, draft, summarise and take some of the donkey work out of complicated processes. People still make the decisions.

Complaints are a good example

Complaints are going to be very much on people's minds at London Vet Show following the CMA changes.

They are also a particularly good example of the sort of problem we built Helm to solve.

A complaint should not become a lonely, miserable job sitting with one practice manager who has to reconstruct what happened, chase everybody involved, find the relevant records, remember deadlines, work out what needs to happen next and eventually write a response.

Helm Resolve, our veterinary complaints workflow, brings that work together.

It gives the complaint clear ownership, structure, target dates, reminders, supporting material, an audit trail and AI assistance, while keeping people in control of the process.

More importantly, we want practices to be able to learn from complaints.

Complaints inevitably involve people, but very often the useful question is not simply who did something wrong? It is what was it about the system that allowed this to happen, and what could we change to make it less likely to happen again?

That is where a complaint can stop being something to endure and start becoming useful.

The new CMA requirements make that operational side particularly important. Practices will increasingly need to demonstrate that information has been given, followed through and handled consistently, with clear ownership and evidence of what happened. That is much more than an admin problem.

We will be demonstrating Resolve at London Vet Show and, just as importantly, talking to practices about how they are approaching the changes and where the difficult bits are likely to be.

Come and find us

We are on stand C21 at London Vet Show on Thursday 19 and Friday 20 November.

You should be able to spot us. We are bringing a Helm motorcycle and sidecar with us, because once you've called something Sidecar, this sort of thing becomes fairly inevitable.

Opposite the stand is SA1, the Helm Hub, with somewhere to sit down, meet the team and have a proper conversation.

Ed, Tom and I will be there across both days, along with our Helm's Angels, running live demos and talking to vets, nurses, receptionists, practice managers and owners about real life in veterinary practice, the bits that get in the way, and whether Helm can help.

At 5.30pm on Thursday, as London Vet Show moves into Happy Hour, we'll also be having drinks in the Helm Hub.

There will be no requirement to discuss software.

Although we probably will.