Story from the Field: When Field Experience Shapes the Tools
A request from a Colorado wildfire deployment became a new EASApp® capability in just eight hours.
During a wildfire response in Pueblo County, Colorado, the Front Range Veterinary Medical Reserve Corps (FRVMRC) was supporting a large-animal evacuation shelter caring for animals from a response involving more than 1,000 animals.
In an operation of that size, veterinary documentation is more than recordkeeping. Multiple people may care for an animal across different shifts, follow-up needs must be communicated, and team members who are not physically at the shelter may still need to understand what is happening.
FRVMRC was using EASApp® to maintain that shared record, documenting medical status, treatments, observations, and follow-up needs so information could move with the animal and between members of the response team.
And then the field identified something that could make it better.
“Could We Add This?”
During the deployment, a member of the veterinary team asked whether EASApp’s Vet Notes could include an editor that would better support structured SOAP notes, Subjective, Objective, Assessment, and Plan, within the veterinary record.
The enhancement was already on the EASApp development roadmap. But an active deployment changed its priority.
The DARTCC technology team began work immediately.
Within eight hours of the initial request, the enhancement had been developed, tested, and released to the live EASApp platform.
An idea coming directly from responders caring for animals in Colorado did not have to wait for a future development cycle. Their experience helped improve the tool while the need was happening.
“It’s exciting to work with a developer who listens to the needs of responders and can quickly adapt the app to better support veterinary teams during active emergencies.”
Built With the People Who Use It
For DARTCC, this story is about more than how quickly a software feature was released.
It is an example of what building together looks like.
The people working in shelters, caring for animals, coordinating volunteers, communicating across shifts, and responding to changing conditions understand needs that cannot always be anticipated from behind a computer screen.
They bring the field experience. We bring the technology expertise. Together, we build better tools.
And what is learned in one community does not have to stay there. An improvement identified during a Colorado wildfire response can become a capability available to other animal response teams when their communities need it.
That is how we believe these tools should grow: by listening to the people doing the work, learning from real-world experience, and sharing what we learn so everyone benefits.
We listen. We learn. We share. We prepare, together.
What Are You Seeing in the Field?
Every team works differently. Every response teaches us something.
If your team has an idea, a challenge, or a workflow we should better understand, we want to hear about it.