3 Jul 2025
Technology expert says innovations for sector intended to help vets in their duties.
Chris Simpson
Job Title
Image: ipopba / Adobe Stock
An artificial intelligence (AI) expert has insisted the technology is only intended to help vets, rather than replace them.
Nicolò Frisiani, chief executive of Lupa Pets – which offers AI-powered practice management and a clinical note transcription tool – sought to reassure delegates during a discussion at the recent BVA Live event in Birmingham.
Concerns on issues including job displacement, over-reliance on the technology, accuracy and biases within data, liability, climate impact, data security and privacy, conflicts with contextualised care and animal welfare were raised during the Interactive Zone discussion.
But many others indicated they had already incorporated the technology into their daily practice in areas such as communication, diagnostics, cytology and developing algorithms for analysing adverse behaviours.
Asked how vets can defend their diagnostic approach if AI tools can reach the same conclusion, Mr Frisiani said: “AI helps you in that situation more than harms you.”
He also noted clinicians will likely have access to vet-specific diagnostic AI tools superior to those a pet owner would have access to.
He added: “For a very non-foreseeable future AI is only meant to be supporting [vets], not substituting. It’s nowhere near having the intelligence in [substituting] such a complicated job.”
The session was also told that the BVA is developing a new policy on AI implementation and examining the impacts it could have on the profession, including job displacement.
Council member Nick Jackson said: “The technology’s here. We can’t do anything about that, and things could get better, but they will definitely be different.”
Several delegates said AI is a “massive time-saver” and “really efficient” for taking and consistently formatting notes, though others suggested manual note taking was a “training exercise for your brain” and there was a risk of losing “something fundamental” through an increased use of technology.
But Mr Jackson argued clinicians should still review and adjust consultation notes accordingly before saving them, and that every vet will have their own process.
Mr Frisiani added: “Things evolve, and while they evolve, we keep having conversations like this, so that we make sure that we put the right structure in place so that skill is not lost, it’s just translated into another tool.”
He also argued there was nothing “intrinsic in the use of AI that goes against any key of contextualised care,” noting the technology can draw on a pet’s complete medical history and past consultation notes.
He added: “It’s up to you how you decide to use the tool in a more contextual care-friendly way.”
Another delegate suggested AI could be “a remarkable amount of power to your elbow in terms of making diagnoses that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to do” in-house and without the use of an endoscope or anaesthesia.
By requiring fewer visits and “extraneous” tests, “minimising their contact with us, to an extent, is actually beneficial from the point of view of animal welfare,” he continued.
On the issue of liability, Mr Jackson likened AI to trusting books or lab equipment without prior research, adding: “We use those as tools, and we take that and we use our judgement as vets to make decisions and come to a conclusion, and that’s why we have the liability.”
He also urged delegates to “get informed about AI, because it’s part of our lives, professionally and societally.”
