For many pet owners, a trip to the vet is stressful. Vetr Health, a startup in Grand Rapids, flips the script by delivering care at home.

Ashley Womersley (DVM ’12) is one of the talented and dedicated veterinarians contributing to the mission of Vetr Health. She provides expert care to a wide range of patients and clients, including those who may have difficulty visiting a clinic due to mobility issues, anxiety, or other barriers. By offering in-home visits with a fear-free approach, Womersley can deliver personalized care to pets and their humans in the comfort of their own environment, making veterinary services more accessible and less stressful for both pets and their owners.

Vetr Health prioritizes reading body language and using a positive rewards system to make pets feel safe, allowing an opportunity to build trust and ensure access to essential preventative wellness care that may otherwise have been unattainable. In addition to in-home visits, the company provides vaccinations, testing, a complete pharmacy, and unlimited telehealth access. They run all samples at their own lab, allowing them to expedite cases and even have prescriptions ready the same day when needed.

So how did Womersley find her way to Vetr Health? After years of navigating back-to-back 15-minute appointments, often double or even triple-booked, Womersley began to feel the impact of burnout. The rushed pace left little room for meaningful client connection, and she saw firsthand how it was affecting both her patients and their families. Determined to make a change, she sought out a workplace that aligned with her values.

At Vetr Health, Womersley discovered a more sustainable way to practice medicine—one where veterinarians work at a healthier pace and experience less emotional and physical exhaustion, yet still feel they’ve put their “full souls” into their work at the end of each day. “Helping people be part of their animal’s care and fully understand what’s going on, while having calm patients who enjoy our visits, is essential,” she says. Vetr Health’s mission doesn’t stop at compassionate care. As a female- and minority-owned company, it’s also deeply committed to equity, starting with closing the gender pay gap in veterinary medicine. For the founders, that’s not just a goal—it’s a non-negotiable.

One way Vetr Health stays ahead is by streamlining work with the help of their very own artificial intelligence (AI). Vetr Health was selected to be a part of the Google AI Academy, where they are working alongside Google to create cutting-edge technology that will revolutionize the way veterinary practices operate.

Womersley shares her thoughts on this collaboration: “Google has been hugely helpful in giving us ideas on how to make what we are creating work better and coaching us on how to build this platform to its full potential with all the bugs already worked out.” In the next six months to a year, Vetr AI should be fully operational.

What exactly does this mean for Vetr Health and the future of veterinary care? “It’s helping us build a platform for mobile veterinary clinics. It’s combining the normal wellness records with AI so that when we go into the home for a visit, AI is listening and summarizing the visit into records, which saves an incredible amount of time. What used to take 45 minutes to review and summarize can now be done in just minutes. This allows us to spend more time with our patients and clients,” explains Womersley.

This efficiency isn’t just about saving time; it’s about enhancing the quality of care. By taking administrative burdens off the shoulders of veterinarians, AI frees them to focus on what truly matters: patient care. Looking to the future, Womersley envisions using AI to help summarize diagnostics and identify trends in exam findings, blood values, and medical histories. “AI isn’t making a diagnosis. It’s making suggestions based on patterns, which allows us to focus on diagnostics and treatment options,” she explains. “This will allow us to spend more time with patients and give everyone more time to focus on the treatment that matters.”

Looking ahead, Womersley and the team at Vetr Health are eager to continue improving the way pets and their families experience care. Not only do they aim to expand Vetr Health’s reach to more communities, but they’re also exploring the possibility of helping other independent mobile veterinary practices work more efficiently by granting them access to the technology they’ve developed.

Womersley is excited about the possibilities for the future of veterinary care, and she credits her Michigan State University College of Veterinary Medicine training as being an integral part of her ability to innovate. “Exposure to clients and different ways to practice during rotations out in the field was critically beneficial to my learning,” she says. “Being an alum of CVM means having a community. The support and camaraderie are so important.”

To current students, Womersley offers this advice: “Anything is possible. Just because something has always been done one way doesn’t mean it’s the only way. Think outside the box, see a different vision, and go for it!”