Impact
Veterinary medicine is in crisis. The profession has one of the highest suicide rates of any healthcare field. Burnout, documentation burden, staffing shortages, and financial pressure are driving veterinarians out of practice.
At the same time, access to care is declining, particularly in rural communities and for food animal veterinarians.
Our impact operates at three levels:
1. Empowering veterinarians
We reduce documentation time through AI-assisted SOAP generation, streamline operations, and improve margins through integrated diagnostics at 30%+ cost savings. Mobile veterinarians can earn more while working fewer, more intentional hours. This restores autonomy and work-life balance.
2. Expanding access to care
Mobile care improves access for seniors, pet parents with mobility limitations, anxious or reactive pets, and aging animals. Our platform makes it economically feasible for more veterinarians to operate in underserved communities.
3. Strengthening rural and food animal infrastructure
While we are beginning in companion animal, the platform naturally extends to large animal and equine veterinarians, who are mobile by default and face even greater shortages. There is growing state and national interest in solving veterinary workforce gaps in rural and food animal systems. Our infrastructure supports veterinarians who choose to stay and serve those communities.
We are not just building software. We are building the operating backbone that enables the next generation of independent veterinarians to thrive.
What I'll do with $5,000
(We understand the prize has increased to $10,000 through a partnership with Ventures 313.)
$7,500: 8-Month Infrastructure Runway
This funding will cover eight months of secure GPU infrastructure to host our AI Operating System. We will rent a ~128GB RAM GPU machine capable of running our full Dockerized stack, including:
-FastAPI backend
-Qdrant (vector database)
-MongoDB
-Ollama container serving models such as Mistral, Llama, and DeepSeek
This infrastructure will support up to 10 concurrent veterinarians with low-latency performance and predictable, fixed monthly costs. It allows us to operate efficiently while onboarding our first cohort of external veterinary users.
$2,500: Acquire First 10 Mobile Veterinary Customers
We will allocate funds toward recruiting and onboarding our first 10 mobile veterinary customers by:
-Attending the Michigan Veterinary Medical Association (MVMA) Conference
-Attending the Illinois Veterinary Medical Association (IVMA) Conference
These conferences provide direct access to independent and mobile veterinarians across the Midwest, enabling targeted recruitment and early platform validation.
Quick Bio
Rachel Berkal is a co-founder and Chief Operating Officer at Vetr Health, leading business development, marketing, operations, and financial planning.