Transforming veterinary anesthesia with teleconsulting

On this week’s episode of The Vet Blast Podcast presented by dvm360, Adam Christman, DVM, MBA, interviews Gianluca Bini, DVM, MRCVS, DACVAA, founder of Safe Pet Anesthesia, about his teleanesthesia service that remotely supports veterinary teams during anesthesia from induction through recovery via live video.

Bini explains how the platform works across common devices, how it has grown rapidly in under a year, and how it boosts patient safety, builds confidence among technicians and veterinarians, and helps close the access-to-care gap in veterinary anesthesia.

Below is a partial transcript, edited lightly for clarity.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: That's the thing. There are not many veterinary anesthesiologists around…let alone providing access to all these different hospitals that you're covering right now, which is phenomenal. The fact that you have an anesthesiologist right then and there…virtually watching over your cases. How do they have access to it? Is it a camera that they're using? Is it their laptops? What does that look like?

Gianluca Bini, DVM, MRCVS, DACVAA: They can use a camera. They can use a laptop…. Some people have a camer…connected to a laptop. Some of them use an iPad. Some of them use a phone. It doesn't really matter which device you you want to use, as long as you have a camera and Wi-Fi. That is all you need, really.

Christman: How many cases a day do you typically see?

Bini: …Because we work across time zones, we see about 15 to 25 cases a day, depending on the day…. We have clinics that are in Pacific time,…Eastern time, [and] central time, so we try to spread it out across the day, if we can.

Christman: We never [thought], even 5 years ago, that we would have that ability and access to a veterinary anesthesiologist. I remember I had a dog…under anesthesia [with] a first-degree [atrioventricular] block, but I wanted to chat with an anesthesiologist. By the time I was able to find one, it was just so much hassle…. I think this is great.