One of the topics that we will cover at our annual Industry Overview presentations at VMX and WVC concerns the consumerization of the veterinary pharmacy. If done right, consumerization can be a win-win for those involved in getting prescription and non-prescription pet medications to pet owners. But an emerging technology may make this experience even more complicated.
The technology model is called ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence tool from a company called OpenAI. ChatGPT interacts with the user in a conversational way. It can answer questions, follow up questions and challenge premises; however, it is still in a testing phase and is trained on a limited dataset. I signed up as a tester and asked it a few animal drug and veterinary questions – I was blown away how much better ChatGPT is than a search engine.
I asked Chat GPT about pet owner reviews of a few medications, which are important for online purchases, but it is not trained on that data yet. How will it eventually manage negative reviews? It wouldn’t make drug recommendations (yet) when asked. If you are a company that uses a website to support your business, pay attention to ChatGPT. It will make the experience better – and more complicated.
Bob Jones
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