Sharing your pet's clinical record with the vet

The three options are not alternatives to each other: they answer different needs and you may well use all three in the same month. The main difference comes down to two things, whether the recipient can write, and whether the sharing can be withdrawn afterwards.

• Read only link: right for a one off clinic, a boarding kennel or a second opinion. Nobody has to sign up.
• Member invitation: right for anyone involved in the animal's care on an ongoing basis, such as a partner or a relative.
• Exported file: right when somebody needs a copy to attach, to print, or to hand to someone who will never open a link.

1. 1

   Open the animal's profile and start sharing

   The command sits in the header of the detail page. The first time round the list of links is empty and the panel offers to create the first one directly.

2. 2

   Choose which sections to include

   The identity details are always included and do not appear among the options. There are seven optional sections: vaccines, treatments, parasite control, allergies and conditions, visits, appointments and weight. Select only what the recipient actually needs.

3. 3

   Create the link and copy it

   The link appears in the list with its creation date and the number of sections included. The copy command puts it on the clipboard, ready to paste into a message or an email.

4. 4

   Check what the recipient will see

   Open the link in a private window before sending it. You will see exactly what they will see, including any section you forgot to leave out.

5. 5

   Send it with a message explaining what it is for

   People who receive a bare link often do not open it. Write the animal's name, the reason, and if it is for a consultation, the appointment date.

6. 6

   Refresh the data when it changes

   The link shows a copy of the data taken at the moment of creation. If you add a vaccination afterwards, use the refresh command to regenerate that copy, otherwise the recipient keeps seeing the earlier version.

7. 7

   Revoke the link once it is no longer needed

   Revoking deactivates the link while keeping it in the list, and you can reactivate it later. Deleting removes it entirely and cannot be undone: revoke when you think it might come in handy again.

Knowing what the other person will see is the part almost nobody checks before pressing send. The content depends on the sections you selected, and each one shows specific fields.

An invitation is for sharing that is ongoing rather than occasional: two people splitting the care of the same animal, a relative giving the medication while you are away. Unlike a link, a member is an identified person and their actions stay traceable.

• Invitations are sent from the members section of the animal's profile, using an email address or a user identifier.
• Two roles can be assigned: editor, who can add and change entries, and viewer, who can only read.
• The owner role stays yours and cannot be assigned to an invited person.
• Only somebody able to manage members sees the invite command, so a viewer cannot add other people.
• Actions taken on the profile are kept in an activity log you can consult.
• Removing a member closes their access immediately, without touching the entries they created.

In some situations a link is the wrong choice: no signal in the consulting room, a clinic that wants an attachment for its own records, a trip abroad. In those cases you export.

1. From the animal's profile, the export menu produces a CSV file or a PDF document covering vaccinations, treatments, visits, appointments, weights and expenses.
2. Also from the profile, the passport command opens the print dialogue with a summary of vaccinations, visits and appointments.
3. From account settings, the personal data export produces one JSON file containing pets, records, contacts and budget.
4. The PDF and the passport can be saved as documents by choosing print to file in the browser dialogue.
5. Keep the exported copy with your other household documents, not only on the phone.

Sharing also works in the other direction. A clinic using the platform can make its own clinical records available to you, and you find them gathered on a dedicated page.

• The records are read only: you can consult them but not edit them, and rightly so, because they are the practice's own clinical documents.
• They appear only once the clinic has closed and shared them with the owner: a record still in draft is not visible.
• They are structured in four parts following the clinical scheme used in veterinary medicine: subjective, objective, assessment and plan.
• Each record shows which animal it refers to and the date and time it was created.
• If a record you expect is missing, the request goes to the clinic, because sharing starts from their side.

Shares pile up quietly: a link created for a consultation two years ago is still there and still works. A review every six months, done alongside the review of your due date calendar, takes only a few minutes.

1. Open each animal's list of links and revoke the ones created for reasons that are now closed.
2. Permanently delete long revoked links you will never reactivate.
3. Check the member list and remove anyone no longer involved with the animal.
4. Confirm that assigned roles are still the minimum ones needed.
5. Refresh the data on links that are still active, so whoever uses them is not reading stale information.
6. Remind anyone holding an exported file that their copy does not update itself.