You’ve come a long way kitty...

From the very beginning AVMI designed its new feline radiotherapy ward with the goal of ensuring optimal supervision of every patient hospitalized for radioiodine therapy. The feline radiotherapy ward is set up with multiple large picture windows to allow veterinarians and technicians the opportunity to observe these patients throughout their hospitalization. Despite the improvement in patient monitoring enabled by these design changes however, the veterinarians and technicians providing care for radioactive patients are restricted by the same principles that require your dental technician to exit the room when taking your dental radiographs. The dental technician who takes your dental radiographs does not leave the room because the individual exposure from 1 dental x-ray is harmful, but because the cumulative exposure this person would obtain over a career taking dental radiographs could be. Similarly, continuous direct supervision of cats receiving radioiodine therapy could prove problematic to those providing care for them.

There is a solution to this problem however. And this is where technology enters the picture. Recently AVMI improved upon its original design by incorporating personal web cams (cleverly called iCat web cams) for each and every feline patient hospitalized for radioiodine therapy. “Not only do the iCat web cams allow each client to personally keep tabs on their own pet while it is hospitalized, but they also allow us to monitor each patient continuously throughout it's stay.” says Broome. AVMI clients can be provided with their own personal web link that allows them to view a password protected web cam that is actually mounted inside their cat's cottage. While the client is able to view a continuous live web based motion picture of their own individual cat, our staff technicians and doctors have 24 x 7 access to a web interface that allows individual or simultaneous viewing of every cat hospitalized for radioiodine therapy. This solution provides clients with a real sense of confidence in how their cat is doing during its hospitalization. Indeed, the interface is so flexible that many clients have actually kept tabs on their cats by viewing their personal iCat web cams from their iPhones even while at work. How these client's employers feel about that remains to be seen.