Imagine your practice trying to operate without your practice-management software or without your radiograph machine. My intent is not to cause a scare, but rather to make you aware and stress that computers are mechanical devices that will fail.
The question is: Can your business risk an outage that could potentially last days?
Something that I’ve learned the hard way is that it’s not a question of if a computer will go bad, rather it’s when it will go bad. It may be a surprise, but most personal and entry-level business computers are not built to be rock solid, from a reliability perspective, so please understand that at some point a machine will fail. A machine going down can significantly impact your business until it is replaced or fixed. Sometimes this could be as trivial as replacing a wireless router, or could be as severe as a corrupted hard drive.
A Little Insurance
Spending a few extra dollars could pay off if and when your machine does fail. I think it’s a good idea to have a maintenance agreement on your machine that will ensure a replacement part is shipped to you within 24-48 hours that will get you back online. If your maintenance agreement will soon lapse, it’s time to consider a new machine.
Let us consider your server that houses your practice management software. Sure, you take daily backups, but what if the hard drive on the server fails? Even though you have the backup, you have to completely rebuild your server, which takes a great deal of time. Having a maintenance agreement or a backup machine will help minimize downtime that negatively affects your business.
Also consider other options that provide you immediate access to data via the web. VICSD has offered clinics the ability to submit, store, and review images for years through the cloud-based VPACS and will soon be rolling out Vetology, which will allow clinics to do the same and more via the web. Utilizing a service like VPACS or Vetology reduces the reliance on your in-house machines to be able to serve up images and ensures you will always have access to images.
What Should You Do Next?
First, think about the impact of a potential computer outage. If this has the potential to be significant, then consider how you would mitigate that risk. Are you tech savvy or do you know of a local computer shop that could help minimize risk of outages? If so, I strongly suggest you do a review of your infrastructure or engage a local team to get some help. If you have been running your practice-management software on a 4-year-old machine that has never failed, then consider yourself very lucky. I recently read a statistic that states hard drives fail 15 times more than vendors originally estimate. While you may not know computers that well, there are quite a few reasonably priced vendors that just want to help you. Finally, also consider services that will allow you to focus on your practice rather than on IT, such as Vetology.
-Josh Yoo, Head of IT
About me: I spent my previous life as a techophile working for IBM but have since seen the light and am following in my father’s footsteps to become a veterinarian. Seeing this industry firsthand, I have realized how hard veterinarians work and what little time they have to explore technology options that could help improve their practice. That’s where I might be able to offer a hand until I get my DVM.
