VetAnaLog

VetAnaLog is a project funded by the Hasler Stiftung that aims to replace paper-based anaesthesia records in veterinary medicine with an automated, structured digital solution. The project started on 1 October 2026 and is hosted by the Software Engineering Group, University of Bern, in collaboration with the Vetsuisse Faculty, University of Zurich.

The idea comes from a gap I experienced first hand when I worked as a veterinarian: still today, it is standard in the industry that patient vital monitoring during anaesthesia is recorded on paper. At a clinic like the Universitäres Tierspital Zürich with around 4,650 surgeries per year, this results in approximately 130,000 manual records every single year. The administrative burden is huge, but so is the promise of an automated solution.

My Role: Project Lead

I wrote and submitted the proposal and lead the project, working on it together with a junior team member.

The project aims to:

• Vital Data Collection: Automatically collect monitor-derived anaesthesia vitals.
• Event & Medication Logging: Facilitate logging of intra-procedural events and medications during anaesthesia.
• Automated Reporting: Provide an automated, structured anaesthesia report draft from the resulting timeline.
• Research Cohort: Collect the first machine-learning-ready veterinary anaesthesia cohort, combining physiological timelines, timestamped interventions, medications and clinician-validated outcomes.

The project is a collaboration between:

• Sarah Rebecca Meyer, Software Engineering Group, University of Bern (Project Lead)
• Sebastiano Panichella, Software Engineering Group, University of Bern & IDeaLS Lab, The Italian Institute of Artificial Intelligence (AI4I) (software engineering & generative AI)
• Prof. Regula Bettschart-Wolfensberger, Vetsuisse Faculty, University of Zurich (veterinary anaesthesia & clinical supervision)

The project is hosted by Prof. Timo Kehrer within the Software Engineering Group at the University of Bern.

Many thanks to the Dean of the Vetsuisse Faculty, University of Zurich, for the kind congratulations.