VetApp, the Polish startup betting on data and diagnostics

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What pet owner hasn’t faced this panicked moment: your dog or cat makes a strange sound, starts pacing, maybe looks confused. Is it serious?

Do we need to rush to the vet?

Enter VetApp, a fast-growing Polish startup on a mission to answer that question before full-blown Pet Parent Panic sets in (followed by a hefty bill).

By connecting pet owners with licensed veterinarians through on-demand teleconsultations, VetApp helps pet parents avoid unnecessary clinic visits.

Pet telehealth is a fast-growing, increasingly competitive space. Read on to discover how VetApp plans to stand out, and expand across Europe and the UK.

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For most pet owners, the hardest question to answer is often: “Do we need to run to the vet?”

But what if an app could tell you whether Luna or Bella’s weird cough was an emergency or just a hairball?

“And often, getting to a vet is either too difficult (or there are not enough specialists), too time-consuming, and can be really, really pricey. These are the problems we want to solve.”

VetApp offers AI-powered triage, virtual consultations, and preventative care advice for pet parents. Launched in April 2024, the app currently has over 17,000 active users, mostly in Poland and the UK.

STANDING OUT

That said, VetApp has its work cut out battling for recognition in the crowded tele-vet space.

This industry has boomed in recent years, with platforms like PawSquad, FirstVet, Fuzzy and Pawp offering chat-based vet services, often bundled with subscriptions or insurance. Even pet care heavyweights such as Chewy are entering the virtual vet care space.

So what makes VetApp different?

“We didn’t want to be just another symptom checker or chat app,” said Mazurek.

“This is our foundation. Currently we have a database of over 8,000 symptoms and even more thousands of clinical trials results,” Mazurek said, adding that simple symptom checkers typically cover only 59-69 symptoms.

VetApp’s core proprietary vector database integrates clinical research, symptom patterns, and real-life veterinary cases. VetApp developed its database alone, and then entered into partnerships with academic partners like the Free University of Berlin.

“We’d love to be formally certified as a diagnostic tool,” Mazurek says. “But veterinary tech is largely unregulated.” The only available certificate for now is the U.S. Clinical Decision Support certification.

WHAT’S NEXT

When asked what’s next, Mazurek signals that VetApp continues to weigh up whether to focus on growth, or on the technology.

“We are having internal discussions about what we should focus on. We have two main paths [we could follow]: The first one is to maximise our growth, because this is needed for business reasons, of course. The second is to develop our technology.”

VetApp is now part of the Tenity Digital Health Accelerator launched by the Swiss Stock Exchange. The company is fundraising for a seed round to expand its presence in the UK and enter the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland).

VetApp still has some distance to cover before it reaches mainstream adoption. Still, in a market increasingly driven by data and digital expectations, VetApp’s technology combined with academic rigour could be a crucial differentiator.

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