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Whether you’re a one-person operation or a growing business with a full team, we’re here to help. Get in touch and let’s talk about what we can do for you.
Whether you’re a one-person operation or a growing business with a full team, we’re here to help. Get in touch and let’s talk about what we can do for you.
When the consult room stops, the practice stops. Everything else is a detail.
A vet practice runs on a chain of systems that all have to work at once: the practice management system, the imaging, the lab analysers, the card terminal and the phone. Any one of them failing during morning consults costs you appointments, revenue and goodwill, and the pressure lands on the people least able to absorb it. This page is about keeping that chain up, and about the specific technical problems vet practices have that most IT providers have never had to think about.
Practices carry a set of risks that are genuinely unusual.
Clinical systems can’t simply be updated. Your radiography, ultrasound or analyser workstation is very likely running an older version of Windows because that’s what the modality vendor certified, and updating it would void support. So it sits on your network, unpatched, doing an essential job. Every practice manager knows about it and most IT providers either ignore it or tell you to replace a working X-ray machine.
Downtime isn’t a nine to five problem. If you run your own out of hours, or share a rota, a failure at two in the morning with a collapse coming in is a different category of problem to an office losing email on a Tuesday.
Losing access to records is a clinical issue, not just an IT one. Without history, medication records and consent, a practice can’t safely treat. Ransomware has hit veterinary groups precisely because the pressure to pay is so immediate.
And everything runs through reception. Phones, bookings, payments and the queue in the waiting room are one system in practice, even if they’re four systems on paper.
When your rooms stop, your practice stops. And the things most likely to stop them are the things nobody has looked at in three years.
Practice management systems, imaging, lab integrations and payment terminals form a chain, and a chain fails at its weakest point. In most practices that point is a server in a cupboard nobody has audited, an imaging PC that can’t be patched, or a backup that’s been running for years without anyone testing whether it restores.
Meanwhile the data you hold is genuinely attractive: client contact details, payment information and a business that cannot tolerate being offline. That combination is exactly what ransomware operators look for.
Most of this is fixable without replacing clinical equipment or disrupting your day. Segregate the systems that can’t be patched so they can’t become an entry point. Make the backup real and test it. Protect the accounts and devices properly. Then the realistic bad day is a slow morning rather than a week of paper records.
Servers, networks, workstations and the connections between your practice management system, imaging and analysers, monitored and maintained so problems get caught before morning consults rather than during them.
Imaging and analyser workstations that vendors won’t let you patch get isolated on the network so they can do their job without being the way in. You keep the equipment, you lose the risk.
Backup covering your practice management system, your imaging and your Microsoft 365, tested rather than assumed, so a bad day never becomes a week of paper notes.
Two minutes, a handful of questions, and a straight answer on where the weak points are. Worth doing before you find out the hard way.
Essential covers the ground that matters most in a practice: device security across reception, consult rooms and the office, complete cloud and email security, real backup of your Microsoft 365 data, and your Microsoft 365 Business Premium licence. Combined with proper monitoring of your server and network, that’s the foundation of a practice that doesn’t stop.
For multi-site groups, or practices with significant imaging and on-site infrastructure, we’d point you at Professional. The strongest security stack we offer plus Cyber Essentials certification matters more when you’re running several sites, holding a lot of imaging data, or answering questions from an acquiring group or an insurer.
And if you’re a small practice with everything already in the cloud, Starter with unlimited support and core device protection may be all you need. We’d want a look at the server and the imaging first.
Whichever route, the first job is the same: an honest look at your server, your imaging workstations and your backups. That’s where the risk almost always sits.
The Essential IT Support Service brings together everything most businesses need in a single monthly price. IT support and device security as the foundation, layered with complete cloud and email security, a Microsoft 365 Business Premium licence, and centrally managed email signatures. Reliable IT and real cyber defence, simply bundled.
Key Features
Every package is unlimited support with no ticket caps and no per-incident charges. Rolling monthly terms are available, longer terms carry a discount, and not-for-profit pricing applies across the range.
Covering your practice management database and your imaging. If nobody has restored from it in the last year, you have a backup policy rather than a backup.
If a workstation can’t be patched, it should not be able to reach the rest of your network, and nothing on the internet should be able to reach it.
Including the ones reception uses. Especially the ones reception uses.
A single shared reception login is convenient right up until you need to know who did what, or someone leaves.
Age, warranty, disk health, and what happens the day it fails. Most practices find out all four at once.
Your appointment line failing is as serious as your PMS failing, and the two are rarely thought about together.
This is the part that stops most people, and it’s usually smaller than imagined.
Server, network, imaging workstations, backups, devices and how your systems connect. About an hour, no obligation, and you keep the findings.
Usually isolating unpatched clinical workstations, making the backup real, and getting multi-factor authentication on. In that order, because that’s where the exposure is.
Nothing significant changes during consults. Migration and upgrade work happens outside clinic hours or on your quietest days, agreed in advance with your practice manager.
Unlimited support, monitoring and patching, plus someone thinking ahead about the server, the licences and the equipment that’s due for renewal.
Questions veterinary practices ask us
We support everything it runs on: the server, the database host, the network, the workstations, the backups and the connections to your imaging and analysers. We work alongside your PMS vendor’s own support rather than trying to replace it, so when something breaks you aren’t the one refereeing between two suppliers.
Keep the machine. We isolate that workstation on the network so it can talk to what it needs to and nothing else, and so nothing from outside can reach it. It’s a well established approach, it doesn’t affect the equipment, and it removes most of the risk that PC currently represents.
Standard support is Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, with out of hours cover available by arrangement, and for practices doing their own emergency work that arrangement is worth having properly. We don’t work to fixed SLA response times, we work on priority, so a practice that can’t access records mid emergency is not waiting in a queue.
That’s the scenario everything else is designed to prevent, which is why we care more about tested restores than about backup software. We’ll tell you honestly how long a recovery would take with your current setup, and most practices are surprised by the answer in one direction or the other.
Yes. Bringing a newly acquired practice onto consistent systems, networks and security is a common piece of work, and it goes far better when it’s planned rather than discovered. We’d want to be involved before completion rather than after.
Yes. Laptops and tablets protected and supported the same as anything in the building, with sensible handling of patchy rural connectivity. Devices that leave the practice are the ones most likely to be lost, so encryption matters here more than usual.
Yes, though a very common one. It breaks any audit trail, it makes offboarding impossible, and it usually means the password hasn’t changed in years. Individual accounts are straightforward to set up and reception generally prefers them once they exist.
We’ll make sure your terminals and the network they sit on are configured sensibly and separated from the rest of your systems, which is both good practice and what your payment provider expects.
Yes. Phones sit alongside IT in the group, and for a practice the appointment line is as critical as the PMS. Worth looking at both together rather than as two separate suppliers.
We look after veterinary practices and other busy, appointment driven businesses across Bristol, Bath, Cheltenham, Gloucester, Somerset and Swindon, with remote support anywhere in the UK. We’re an NCSC Assured Service Provider, Cyber Essentials Plus certified, and ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 accredited.
Start with an hour looking at your server, your imaging and your backups. No obligation, and you’ll come away knowing what would actually happen on a bad day.
There is nothing more annoying than an IT glitch that stops you working efficiently. However, knowing you have access to immediate attention to the glitch and a solution to it, is very reassuring and that is provided by We Do Your IT. We have so appreciated the availability and response given by the team at We Do Your IT, enabling us to remain a productive firm.
Richard Sharp – Sharp Family Law