Video consultations and overnight monitoring
Some things are better seen than described. A limp that only happens on the stairs, a wound three days after an operation, a rabbit who is off her food but perfectly bright — all easier to assess on a live video call from your own home than in a consulting room after a car journey.
We have run video consultations since 2021, and since 2024 we have also offered a live monitoring stream to owners whose pet is staying with us overnight. Everything runs in an ordinary web browser: nothing to install, no account to create, no app to keep updated.
Three kinds of session
All three use the same system and the same link format. What differs is how long they run and who is at each end.
Triage video consultation
A booked appointment with a vet where you show us the animal on camera. You hold the phone or laptop, we ask you to move it, and we watch. It is how we decide together whether something needs to be seen in person today, tomorrow, or not at all.
These run fifteen to thirty minutes and are deliberately not rushed. A good deal of that is spent watching an animal move around a room, which cannot be hurried and is often the part that tells us most.
Quality is set to HD by default because detail matters: the colour of a gum, the rise and fall of a chest wall, the exact moment a hind leg is favoured.
What you need
Short version: a reasonably modern device, a current web browser and a home broadband connection with a bit of headroom. Nothing else.
Before you book, check these four things
1. Your connection
A single HD stream uses roughly 2 to 4 Mbit/s in each direction. For a consultation there are two streams — yours and ours — so allow for both.
We recommend a home broadband connection of at least 10 Mbit/s download and 3 Mbit/s upload, and comfortably more if other people in the house will be using it at the same time. Around 25 Mbit/s down and 5 Mbit/s up is what most households find leaves the picture stable without anyone having to stop what they are doing.
If you are on a metered or capped tariff, please read the data figures in the table below before starting an overnight stream. They are not small.
2. Your device
Any laptop, desktop, tablet or phone made in the last five or six years is fine. A larger screen is genuinely better for the overnight stream; a phone is often better for a consultation, because you can carry it to the animal instead of carrying the animal to it.
3. Your browser
Any current browser will do. There is nothing to install and no account to create. You open the link we send you, allow the browser to use your camera and microphone when it asks, and that is the whole setup.
4. The room
Light matters more than anything else. A window in the daytime, or a lamp you can pick up and move, beats an overhead light every time. Somewhere quiet helps, and a second pair of hands helps a great deal with a dog who will not stay still.
Wired, wireless and mobile
A network cable to the router is the most reliable option, and the one we suggest if you have the choice — particularly for an overnight stream that has to hold up for twelve hours without anybody watching the connection. Wi-Fi is perfectly adequate in most houses; if the signal is weak in the room you plan to sit in, move nearer the router rather than turning the quality down.
Mobile data works for a consultation if the signal is good, though half an hour of HD video is a noticeable amount of an allowance. We would not recommend running an overnight monitoring stream over mobile data at all, for reasons the table below makes obvious.
If the picture struggles
The stream adjusts itself. If bandwidth drops, the picture softens rather than stopping, and sharpens again when there is room. That is normal. If it keeps softening, the usual causes are a busy household connection, a device far from the router, or a large download running on another machine — pausing that usually fixes it within seconds.
Nothing to install
We say this twice on purpose, because it is the question reception is asked most. There is no app, no plug-in and no software download. The link opens a page in your browser and the call happens there. When you close the tab, it ends.
A quick test beforehand
Esme on reception will happily set up a two-minute test call the day before your appointment so that you can find out whether the camera works while nothing is at stake. Ask when you book. It costs nothing and saves the first five minutes of the real appointment.
If it will not work for you
Some houses have a connection that will not carry a stable HD call. That is nobody's failure: tell us and we will book an ordinary appointment instead. Nobody is pushed towards video because it suits the diary.
How long each session runs, and roughly what it uses
These are the figures we give people who ask, and we would rather publish them than have somebody discover them on a monthly bill. All are approximate: real usage depends on how much movement there is in the picture and how good your connection is.
| Session | Typical length | Quality | Bandwidth per stream | Rough data used |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Triage video consultation | 15 – 30 min | HD, 720p | about 2 Mbit/s | 0.7 – 1.4 GB |
| Triage consultation, higher detail | 15 – 30 min | HD, 1080p | 3 – 4 Mbit/s | 1.4 – 2.7 GB |
| Post-operative check-in | 15 – 20 min | HD, 720p | about 2 Mbit/s | 0.7 – 0.9 GB |
| Overnight monitoring, one night | 12 – 14 hours | HD, 720p | 2 – 3 Mbit/s | 11 – 19 GB |
| Overnight monitoring, two nights | 24 – 28 hours | HD, 720p | 2 – 3 Mbit/s | 22 – 38 GB |
A useful rule of thumb: a continuous HD stream at 2.5 Mbit/s uses a little over one gigabyte per hour. An overnight session is therefore in the region of fifteen gigabytes, and two consecutive nights can approach forty. On an unlimited home broadband package that is unremarkable. On a capped or mobile tariff it is not.
Figures are per stream and per direction. During a two-way consultation your connection sends one stream and receives another at the same time, which is why the upload figure matters as much as the download figure for that half hour.
Why the overnight stream runs continuously
The obvious alternative is to send an occasional still image or a short clip every few minutes. We tried that too. It is worse in the way that matters: the thing owners want to see is whether their animal is settled, and settledness is a property of a continuous stretch of time, not of a snapshot.
A cat who happens to be sitting up in every ten-minute still may have slept soundly for nine and a half minutes each time. So the stream stays on from the evening round until morning.
How a video consultation works
From booking to the written summary afterwards. The whole thing is deliberately unremarkable.
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Book it like any other appointment
Telephone 01632 960 480 or email reception@corvuslanevet.example.com. Tell us roughly what it is about, because that decides how long we book and which vet you see.
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A link arrives by email
The email carries the date, the time, the vet's name and a link. The link is unique to your appointment and stops working shortly after it ends. Nothing needs setting up in advance, though you are welcome to open it early and check your camera.
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Get the room ready
Five minutes beforehand, put your pet somewhere with good light and a floor they will walk on, and find a lamp you can pick up. One person holding the camera and another with the animal works far better than one person doing both.
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Join at the appointed time
Open the link. Your browser will ask permission to use the camera and microphone; say yes. You will see yourself, then the vet when they join. If we are running late, a message on the page says so.
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The consultation
Expect to be asked to move the camera a great deal, to put the animal on the floor and let them walk away from you, to hold a light steady, and to stop talking for thirty seconds while we watch breathing. Fifteen to thirty minutes goes quickly.
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What happens afterwards
The vet writes the consultation up on your pet's record exactly as they would in the building, and a written summary reaches you by email the same working day. If your pet needs to be seen in person, reception telephones to arrange it, usually within the hour.
A word about the obvious limitation
A vet examining an animal uses their hands almost as much as their eyes. A video consultation removes half of that, and no amount of resolution puts it back. We are straightforward about this: video is very good at deciding whether and how quickly an animal needs to be seen, and much less good at deciding what is wrong.
Any vet here who is not confident of the answer will tell you so and ask you to come in. That is the system working, not failing.
The overnight monitoring stream
Introduced in 2024, after a decade of telephoning owners at eleven at night to tell them their dog was asleep.
Each of our wards has a fixed camera positioned to give a clear view of the kennel runs. When a patient stays in overnight and is well enough for it to be worth doing, we offer the owner a link that shows a live view of their own animal, from the evening round until we open in the morning.
That is a long stretch of continuous video — commonly twelve hours, and up to fourteen at the end of the year when we close early and open late. The stream does not pause, does not time out and does not need to be restarted. People leave it running on a laptop on the kitchen table or on a spare monitor, and it is still there at six in the morning.
When we offer it
Sam Delacroix decides each evening, patient by patient, on the round. The stream is offered for most routine overnight stays: a patient recovering from surgery who is comfortable and settled, an animal in for fluids or observation, or a case where we simply want another night before sending them home.
We do not offer it for critical patients. When somebody is genuinely unwell overnight the nurse on duty is with them, moving them, treating them and turning lights on and off, and a camera view of that is distressing and misleading in equal measure. Those owners get telephone calls instead, which is the better arrangement and always has been.
What you will actually see
Mostly, an animal asleep. That is the honest answer and it is worth saying plainly, because owners occasionally expect more. You will see the kennel, the bedding, a water bowl and your pet. Overnight the wards are lit at a low level, which the camera handles well, so the picture is dimmer than daytime but perfectly clear. You will also see a nurse come through on each round, roughly every couple of hours, and stop at kennels including yours. On a good night that is the entire programme.
What the stream does not do
There is no sound, in either direction. The wards are shared and a microphone would pick up other people's conversations and other people's animals. There is no way to speak to your pet through it either, which is deliberate: a disembodied voice from a box is not comforting to a dog in a kennel. The stream is live only, so if you close the tab at midnight you cannot go back and watch midnight later.
Where the cameras are, and are not
There is one fixed camera in the dog ward, one in the cat ward and one in the small-pet ward. There are none in the consulting rooms, the theatre, the preparation area, the isolation room or the waiting room, and none anywhere that staff take breaks.
How the images are handled, who can see them and how long anything is kept is set out in the privacy notice.
What it costs
A video consultation is charged at less than the equivalent in-person appointment, because it takes a room and a car park space out of the equation. Fees include tax and were last reviewed in April.
| Item | Fee | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Video triage consultation (up to 20 minutes) | £34.00 | With a veterinary surgeon. Written summary by email included. |
| Extended video consultation (up to 40 minutes) | £56.00 | For several problems, or a long history to work through. |
| Post-operative video check-in | No charge | Included in the price of the procedure, as the in-person check is. |
| Video follow-up, same problem within 14 days | £24.00 | With the same vet where the rota allows. |
| Nurse video appointment | £16.00 | Weight and mobility clinics, feeding plans, aftercare questions. |
| Overnight monitoring stream | No charge | Included in the hospitalisation fee for patients staying in. |
| Daytime ward check on request | No charge | Arranged through reception during opening hours. |
| Test call before an appointment | No charge | Two minutes with reception to check your camera works. |
If you then need to come in
Where a video consultation concludes that your pet must be examined in person, and that appointment happens within seven days, we deduct the video fee from it. You are not charged twice for the same problem.
Insurance
Most insurers now treat a video consultation like any other, but policies vary. Check your wording before booking if the claim matters. We complete claim forms for video appointments exactly as for any other.
Prescriptions
What can be prescribed after a video appointment depends on the medicine, the condition and how recently we examined your pet. The vet will tell you during the consultation. Our general position is on the home page.
Recordings, notes and your information
We do not record video consultations. The call is live between you and the vet, and when it ends nothing of the picture or the sound is kept. What is kept is the clinical note the vet writes afterwards, which goes onto your pet's record in exactly the same way as a note written in the consulting room, and the written summary we send you by email. Occasionally a vet will ask whether they may take a still image — a wound, a skin lesion, a gait — because it is useful to compare against next month. They ask each time, you can say no, and saying no changes nothing about the consultation.
The overnight monitoring stream is live only. It is not recorded for owners and there is no archive to look back through. Ward camera footage is retained briefly for the practice's own safety and clinical governance purposes, and the retention period and lawful basis are set out in the privacy notice. Ward views are never shared with anyone other than the owner of the animal shown.
Appointment links are unique, are sent only to the email address held on your client record, and stop working after the session. If you need one resent, telephone reception rather than forwarding it on, so that we know who has it.
The full detail — what we collect, why, who we share it with and how to ask for a copy — is in the privacy notice. If you have a question about any of it, Grace Whitlock is the person to ask.
Questions we are asked
If yours is not here, telephone reception. Nobody minds.
Do I need to download anything?
No. The whole thing runs in your web browser. You open the link in the email we send you, your browser asks permission to use the camera and microphone, you say yes, and the appointment happens on that page. When you close the tab it is over.
There is no app, no plug-in, no account and no password to remember. If somebody has told you otherwise, they are describing a different system.
How much data does an overnight stream use?
Rather a lot. A continuous HD stream at around two and a half megabits per second uses a little over a gigabyte an hour, so a twelve-hour night comes to somewhere in the region of fifteen gigabytes, and a fourteen-hour winter night can be closer to nineteen. Two consecutive nights can approach forty gigabytes.
On an unlimited home broadband package this is unremarkable and nobody notices. On a capped package, and certainly on mobile data, it is worth thinking about before you start. If your allowance will not stand it, ask us to telephone you with an update instead — that is what we did for the first twenty-six years.
Can I have a video appointment out of hours?
No. Video appointments are booked within our normal consulting sessions, the same as any other appointment. Outside those hours, urgent problems go through the emergency line on 01632 960 480, which is answered by a person at any hour of the day or night.
Please never book a video slot for something you are worried about now. A booked appointment is by definition not an emergency response, and waiting until tomorrow morning is the wrong thing to do with an animal in trouble.
What owners have said about it
Comments left on our feedback cards, reproduced with permission and with surnames shortened.
★★★★★Our spaniel had an intermittent limp that had never once happened in the consulting room. Three visits, three completely normal examinations. On the video call the vet asked me to put the phone on the floor at the bottom of the stairs and just leave it there while I called him down.
She spotted it in about nine seconds. Twenty-five minutes on a video call did what three appointments had not.
— Priya S.
Booking a video appointment
Telephone 01632 960 480 during reception hours, or email reception@corvuslanevet.example.com. Say that you would like a video appointment and tell us roughly what it is about, so that we book the right length with the right vet.
Video appointments are available to registered clients. If you are not registered with us yet, registration is free and takes a few minutes — the steps are on the home page. A first consultation for a new patient needs to be in person, so we will book that and offer video for the follow-ups.
If your pet needs help now, do not book a video appointment. Telephone the number above and say it is an emergency. The line is answered by a person at any hour, day or night.
Elsewhere on this site: the home page for services, fees and opening hours; the about page for how the practice works; the contact page for directions and parking; and the privacy notice for what we hold and why.