Fujitsu, Anicom collaborate on pet care cloud business

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Fujitsu Ltd and Anicom Holdings Inc have announced their agreement to jointly develop and sell medical-support cloud services to animal hospitals in Japan. The two companies will use their strengths, in ICT and veterinary medicine, respectively, to develop new technology-based services and build systems that support the provision of high-quality veterinary medicine at animal hospitals.

Their first offering will be a significant upgrade to Anicom Receptor, Anicom’s existing customer-management software, now in use by 1,800 animal hospitals in Japan. The new version, which will be offered as a cloud service, will add significant features, including electronic medical records as well as other medical-support and business-support features.

To be jointly developed by Anicom and Fujitsu, the new service, called Anicom Receptor F Series, will be the first medical-support service for animal hospitals in the industry, and will be available beginning November 2013. In addition to enabling animal hospitals to use statistical information gathered from other hospitals registered for the service via the cloud, the new service will facilitate care coordination and the sharing of diagnostic information between these hospitals. It will also enhance work efficiency, all of which is expected to result in greater customer satisfaction.

The two companies aim to help create a society in which pet owners can feel more secure about the well-being of their pets. The two companies also plan to develop offerings for other pet-related businesses, including groomers, pet hotels, and pet shops.

In Japan today, the number of pet dogs and cats, at 21.28 million, has surpassed the number of children under the age of 15, at 16.49 million (source: Anicom domestic-animal white paper, 2012). This creates more demand for high-quality care at animal hospitals that prevent and treat illnesses, infectious diseases and injuries.

At most animal hospitals, individual veterinarians are generalists covering many fields of medicine, and each animal hospital is on its own when it comes to managing wide-ranging medical information, monitoring illness trends, and upgrading medical technology. In addition to providing veterinary care during the day, there is a need to provide late-night emergency care and sophisticated services, such as MRIs, and therefore a system in place for secondary treatment at other facilities is a necessity.

Going forward, with advances in the use of ICT and greater coordination among animal hospitals, there will be an important need to quickly obtain and share the latest medical technologies, case information, and case history of animal patients. There will also be a need to lessen the veterinarian’s workload and explain treatments to pet owners in an easy-to-understand way.

Fujitsu and Anicom are responding to these growing needs by joining forces to develop and sell cloud services to animal hospitals, and to expand the reach of high-quality medical-support services available to animal hospitals. They aim to build an open infrastructure that will enable the pet industry to share and effectively use expertise that is now scattered throughout different animal hospitals.