About Me
Aaron Massecar, MA, Ph.D., MBA, is the Executive Director of the Veterinary Innovation Council. After completing his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Guelph in 2011 and then teaching for 5 years, Dr. Massecar transitioned to veterinary medicine where he believed he could have a greater impact than what could be done in academic philosophy. His first work in veterinary medicine was with Texas A&M where he helped to build the Veterinary Entrepreneurship Academy and the Veterinary Innovation Summit. He later started working on telemedicine with the Veterinary Innovation Council in 2017. While at VIC, he helped to build educational programs for the North American Veterinary Community and later became the Senior Vice President of Learning at the NAVC. A couple of senior executive positions with Colorado State University’s Translational Medicine Institute and the Veterinary Emergency Group, now Dr. Massecar is back at the Veterinary Innovation Council and helping to drive awareness across the industry in domains such as innovation, entrepreneurship, and artificial intelligence. He recently completed his MBA with a focus on organizational strategy. Aaron and his wife live in Colorado with their two dogs and two cats.
Aaron has two key goals:
Prove that education drives business success. Attraction and retention are critical, and a strong educational strategy ensures skill development aligns with business objectives. Better-trained veterinary professionals mean more medically relevant procedures, boosting both revenue and clinical outcomes.
Make learning more effective and efficient. By leveraging evidence-based strategies, he ensures educational experiences truly build skills.
Simply put, Aaron helps organizations use education to fuel growth—and believes there’s a smarter, more cost-effective way to do it.
Recent Publications
Veterinary telehealth and telemedicine services are becoming more popular and prevalent—what does it mean for your veterinary practice?
Veterinary Telehealth: What Is It, Where Are We, and What’s Next?
Veterinary telehealth and telemedicine services are becoming more popular and prevalent—what does it mean for your veterinary practice?
Laws and Borders
Hiring a non-American veterinarian is easier if you familiarize yourself with the various government programs and timelines.
Trust Your Team to Be Great
Autonomy, a sense of purpose and well-timed feedback can elevate your employees to the next level of performance.
The Future of Veterinary Practice
Forced to pivot because of COVID-19, the profession learned more lessons about telemedicine. The pandemic exposed clinics and clients to pet-only visits and could lead to the rebranding of relief work.
The Business of Continuing Education
Now is the time for CE providers and users to demand more from learning experiences and work together to raise the standards.
The next frontier
The move toward biomarker testing is an example of the expansion of preventive, predictive, personalized and participatory animal health care.
The not-too-distant future
The Veterinary Innovation Summit showed that pet health care is moving from reactive and acute to proactive and preventive. You can thank telehealth, wearables and other technology-driven ideas.
Where ideas take root
The Veterinary Entrepreneurship Academy is training the next generation of veterinary business leaders.
Get on Board or Get out of the Way
Whether you support it or not, veterinary telehealth is here to stay.
The economics of telehealth
Providing after-hours triage care can improve client service, team morale and job attractiveness.
The future of virtual care
The argument against virtual care in veterinary medicine often boils down to the question of whether the VCPR can be established through virtual care tools in the absence of a physical examination.
Common ground
Working with human health companies that developed similar products removes much of the research and development cost in animal health.
The Changing Veterinary Landscape
We are entering a time of universal access to animal health care.
5 top trends of 2017
More veterinarians are internalizing the locus of control and taking responsibility for their own, and by extension the profession’s, development.
Implement Telehealth to Improve Your Practice
Novices can utilize text messaging, website tools and video platforms to begin elevating the level of client interaction and communication.