Using pet owner voices to elevate patient care

Mars Veterinary Health recently published its’ 2025 Science Impact Report, which provided a review of the company’s veterinary research and global initiatives that aim to advance veterinary science and clinical practice. In a dvm360 interview, recorded at the 2026 Veterinary Meeting & Expo (VMX) in Orlando, Florida, Dottie Brown, DVM, MS, DACVS, vice president of science and innovation for Mars Veterinary Health, discussed why the company is incorporating client voice in medical records with the goal of elevating patient care.

The following is a transcript of this video:

dvm360: What is the significance of having pet owners’ voices in patient medical records?

Dottie Brown, DVM, MS, DACVS: We have a really high priority to think about health outcomes, and what we're really trying to do here is bring the voice of the owner into our medical record in a really quantifiable and actionable way. And so what we're doing is we're building and validating questionnaires that owners can complete that are specific to health conditions in their pets, and by having them complete these questionnaires at their visits, incorporating that into the medical record, we can then follow those health outcomes.

So, a classic example is an owner brings their cat in, and that cat's been drinking a lot, urinating all over the house, and they bring that cat in as it's diagnosed with diabetes. Now the veterinary care team is going to be very focused on blood glucose level for that cat, it's very important to manage that. And the reality is, the owner doesn't care specifically about the blood glucose. What they care about is the fact that their cat's been urinating all over the house. The cat's not interacting with them anymore because it's sitting at the water bowl all day long. So we want to be able to capture those health outcomes—the cat's urination at home, the cat's drinking at home—and pull that into the medical record, so that we can monitor that as a health outcome and make sure that the care we're delivering is meeting the expectations of the veterinary care team and the owner, because that's when we're really, truly [and] holistically delivering the best health outcomes for our patients.

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