The first online pet weight management tool launches
Royal Canin is launching ‘Vet Follow Up’ – an online weight management tool, designed to improve the success of veterinary recommendations and to boost client interaction and education.
The software will allow veterinary practices to keep track of their overweight patients throughout the weight-loss period and beyond, ensuring lasting results and improved quality of life.
It allows pet owners to review veterinary recommendations and input their pet’s weight at home. This information is relayed to the vet practice, meaning the owner is an integral part of the monitoring process.
Marianne Lomberg, Royal Canin’s veterinary marketing manager, explains: “Vet Follow Up is incredibly easy to use. A practice simply creates a new patient file and then enters the relevant data in the programme. The tool does the hard work in calculations for you and will give you a body condition score, an ideal body weight, a calorie allocation and a feeding ration for safe and successful weight loss. The programme then automatically sends an email to the pet owner who can activate their account and add valuable data or review your instructions in the comfort of their own home. This engages the owner further in the follow-up process, tracking their pet’s weight loss, encouraging them to become all the more part of the solution.”
As part of the new online tool and in partnership with the University of Liverpool’s Weight Management Clinic, Royal Canin has developed a unique 9-point Body Condition Score modelled on true-to-life shapes of different dog breeds and sizes. This allows greater accuracy in recognising and then diagnosing obesity.
Marianne adds: “At BCS 9, a toy breed like a Chihuahua is likely to have a lot of fat deposited around the chest and neck, but may still show a ventral abdominal tuck. A Jack Russell Terrier at the same BCS is likely to carry more of its excess fat in the abdomen and less around the chest and neck. We believe that by using these more accurate images, client education and precision in measuring BCS in practice will improve, meaning better weight monitoring for patients.”
The ‘Vet Follow Up’ tool is designed to run on both PCs and Macs and can be accessed for free after obtaining log-in details from your Royal Canin veterinary business manager.
