The Vet Who Built His Own Software: How James Daly Created VetDrive
Every vet knows the feeling: you’re driving home after a calving, half your head still on the case, the other half already dreading the paperwork waiting for you back at the practice. For James Daly, that daily gap between doing the clinical work and finishing the admin wasn’t just a frustration — it became the starting point for the all-in-one practice management platform now trusted by more than 200 clinics across the UK and Ireland.
A vet before a founder
James graduated from UCD in 2010 and spent years as a large animal vet, working alongside his wife Rachel. It was a full life even before VetDrive entered the picture — out the door early for farm calls, back late to write everything up, and at home, raising four kids and buying into the practice.
It was on those drives between calls that the idea for VetDrive really took shape. James found himself thinking less about the next case and more about how much of the admin around it — records, compliance, invoicing — technology could simply take off his plate. As regulation in the veterinary industry kept increasing on both sides of the Irish Sea, that question only got more pressing. VetDrive was built in the margins of an already full life, out of a problem James was living every day.
Building software vets would actually use
What started as one vet’s fix for his own admin has grown into an all-in-one platform for small animal, large animal, and equine practices — combining practice management, client engagement, AI tools, and business analytics in a single system. But the instinct behind it hasn’t changed: every feature still has to earn its place by saving real time, not just adding another dashboard to check. That practical-first approach shaped features like:
- AI Scribe that turns a conversation with a client straight into structured clinical notes — history, findings, and plan sorted automatically, with the full transcript kept alongside an editable summary.
- Online booking and a fully integrated owner app, so clients can book, manage reminders, and pay without a phone call.
- Automated reminders and pet plans that keep clients coming back without anyone on the team having to chase it manually.
- Voice-memo-to-invoice drafting for vets on the road — record a quick note after a call, and a draft invoice is waiting when they’re back at the office, ready for a human to check before it goes out.
- Compliance automation for the growing administrative load around prescribing regulations, built so the extra regulatory burden doesn’t translate into extra hours for the vet.
- Integrations with IDEXX, QuickBooks, Sage, Power BI, Covetrus, and more, so VetDrive connects to the tools a practice already relies on rather than replacing them all.
Every one of these is aimed at the same target: closing the gap between doing the clinical work and finishing the day’s admin — not adding new admin in the name of “innovation.”
Bringing that thinking to UK practices
The same practical approach that built VetDrive in Ireland has carried it straight into the UK, where it now works just as well for fast-moving independent clinics as it does for large corporate groups. Independent practices get the same quick, low-friction onboarding that’s always defined the product — decide this week, be up and running the next. Corporate groups get a system flexible enough to run as their primary PMS across every site, or sit comfortably alongside their existing setup.
It’s proof that VetDrive’s founding instinct — build for how vets actually work, not around how software usually gets sold — travels well.
The story after: joining Herdwatch
In late 2025, VetDrive was acquired by Herdwatch, and James stayed on as Head of Veterinary Solutions — continuing to build the platform, now with more infrastructure behind it. It’s a natural fit: Herdwatch already supports UK vets through Lilac/TB Master, its TB testing tool, alongside Comtag in Ireland — so there was real overlap between the two businesses to build on from day one.
The opportunities James is most focused on now sit at that overlap — a smoother, more automated TB testing and upload process for practices, and eventually, easier data-sharing between vets and the farmers who are already asking for BR reports and prescriptions faster than a manual process allows. Joining Herdwatch also means VetDrive can move faster on new product development, with more resources behind the team building it.
For UK practices weighing up their next practice management system, that’s really the pitch: software built by someone who’s done the job, focused on what actually saves time, not what looks impressive in a demo.
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