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Open Vet Format

Introduction

What is Open Vet Format?

Section titled “What is Open Vet Format?”

Open Vet Format (OVF) is a FHIR-inspired JSON Schema for veterinary medical record exchange. It defines a structured, machine-readable format for representing animal patient data, clinical encounters, diagnoses, lab results, vaccinations, procedures, medications, allergies, and attached documents.

OVF is designed to be the common language between veterinary clinic management systems, pet health apps, and AI-powered tools operating in the Polish and Central/Eastern European market.

Why OVF exists

Section titled “Why OVF exists”

The veterinary software market in Poland and CEE has no interoperability standard. Every clinic system stores data in its own proprietary format, making it nearly impossible to:

  • Transfer a pet’s medical history between clinics
  • Build third-party apps that read veterinary records
  • Feed structured clinical data into AI/LLM systems for analysis
  • Comply with emerging EU pet identification and travel regulations

OVF solves this by providing a single, open, versioned schema that any system can export to and import from.

Key features

Section titled “Key features”

JSON-based

Plain JSON documents validated against JSON Schema Draft 2020-12. No XML, no binary formats.

9 resource types

Patient, Encounter, Condition, Observation, Immunization, Procedure, AllergyIntolerance, MedicationStatement, and DocumentReference.

Extensible

Custom fields via the x_ prefix. All objects allow additional properties without breaking validation.

AI-friendly

Flat, predictable structures with controlled vocabularies. Ideal for LLM function calling and structured output.

Who is it for?

Section titled “Who is it for?”
  • Vet clinic software developers building export/import functionality
  • Pet health app builders who need to read and display veterinary records
  • AI/LLM engineers building agents that process or generate clinical data
  • Integrators connecting multiple veterinary systems in a clinic network

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”
Quick Start Create and validate your first OVF document in 5 minutes.
Installation Install the npm package and set up programmatic validation.
Schema Reference Browse all 9 resource type schemas.