The veterinary laser therapy industry has solid technology that provides patients relief from pain, inflammation, infection, and overall debilitation. The degree of efficacy in a clinic is of course influenced by the quality of hardware: the appropriate amount of power of appropriate wavelengths delivered through appropriate optics into the patient for an appropriate amount of time and in appropriate courses of treatments over time.

There is a second factor that influences therapeutic value and that has caused a fundamental shift in treatment strategy in the industry over the last 5-or-so years: multiple treatment parameters within a give treatment. We have come to know that each of the tissue-types in the body respond slightly differently when exposed to light of varying intensities, wavelengths, and pulse frequencies. For that reason, in an attempt to have the best chance of targeting all the tissues present in an injury, manufacturers have implemented treatments with multiple phases (sub-sets of time within a treatment where the output parameters change) as a way to deliver a variety of options for the variety of tissues present. This is something of a brute force method for covering all bases, and has shown clinical success. 

While hardware is certainly responsible for the ability to deliver multiple parameter-sets, the software is responsible for the organization of these parameters among treatments and within their multiple phases. A series of user-selections within the graphical user interface (GUI) lead to the manufacturer’s best guess for the most appropriate parameter-set for a given treatment. This simple, but clever software provides some interactivity and takes some of the important factors in treatment “recipe building” into account: size, color, and anatomy of the animal and in some cases chronicity and condition name.

From here, the user’s attention turns to the handpiece, and they are instructed to “treat the patient”. This is the huge disconnect in the industry today. You’ve put a child in a car, told them what all the buttons and levers and pedals do, and then told them to “drive”. How can you expect a technician to know what to do at which point in the treatment? Or how often to treat which condition? Or what to expect at what timeline in the rehabilitation process? The standard industry answer up to now has been “training”. On the day of install a representative of the company “teaches” some broad methodology of treatment technique to whomever is present that day. Often the company has a leave-behind treatment atlas or electronic user guide, or at best case, an online training module that can be accessed after the fact to learn more “if necessary”.

Again this is sending your child to driver’s education, sending them home with “Driving for Dummies”, expecting them to read it on their own, and then saying “you’ve been taught how to drive, now go drive”. Fortunately we dont do this. We give the child a permit that only allows them to drive with direct supervision, until they better understand all the nuances, environments, expectations, causes, and effects of driving. Only then do we let them drive freely, and even then, with a much higher price tag on insurance. Maybe that is why therapy lasers are so expensive currently. 

For the first time in our industry, doctorVet affords you the same guidance and supervision with laser therapy. With every laser, we send an expert veterinary laser therapy clinician to the clinic to train your staff for as long as you need. His name is TOBI.

TOBI lives in each doctorVet laser. He is the offspring of sophisticated software and expert clinical collaboration. TOBI understands that each phase of each treatment is special. Not only does he know which parameters to use on which tissues, but he also knows how you should modify your treatment technique based on what you are treating.

At the end of every phase of treatment, TOBI pauses briefly to give you a tidbit of advice that will guide you through the next phase. He tells you when to treat in contact vs non-contact based on if you are treating a deep-seeded injury vs an open flesh wound. He tells you when to increase your scanning speed based on the power settings and color of the animal. He tells you which types of tissue to target during which phases based on the pulse frequencies in that phase and why. He tells you when to follow the lymphatic pathways of the stifle when the goal is to remove metabolic waste from an area in the final stages of treatment.

TOBI has learned from our team of clinicians, engineers, and egg-heads how to best combine the hardware capabilities with clinically proven techniques and fundamental physical principles to achieve optimal clinical effect. And like a good friend, he shares his knowledge with anyone who wants to learn, for as long as it takes for them to become experts themselves. At that point, you can tell TOBI to go lay on his bed until you need him again. 

TOBI is by far the most effective training tool ever to grace the veterinary laser industry. With the amount of turn-over in a clinic, training and re-training new people can be a nightmare, and is most often watered down at each generation of newbie. TOBI allows you to put a new nurse in front of the laser and a patient and provide an effective therapy session on her first attempt. With never-more-than three unambiguous selections that lead to a protocol, your nurse never has to wonder “which should I choose for what”. And then when she is about to say to herself “oh my goodness, oh my goodness, the laser is about to turn on, what do I do now?!?!” TOBI comes to the rescue and tells her exactly what she needs to do next AND why that is the best technique. 

At the end of treatment, TOBI even teaches the nurse (and the pet-owner) what progress to expect in the animal’s recovery, and which are the next steps in its treatment regimen. So in a new nurse’s first two weeks in a standard practice that sees the standard variety of veterinary conditions, she can become as knowledgable as anyone in our industry by simply listening to TOBI, with no added man-power, time, or extra training resources. In that sense, TOBI is not only the nurse’s best friend, but the doctor and practice owner’s best friend as well.