Barb, an emergency room physician and a rider, used her medical expertise to create eVet, an electronic platform for storing equine vaccination records.
By Britney Grover
Portraits by Kristen Lee Photography
Barbara “Barb” Blasko grew up on Long Island in New York, and had her first experience with horses at a fair. “I did one of those little pony rides that you could do for about a dollar back then, where you get on and they lead you around,” she said. “I think after that it was over — I fell in love with horses. I started taking riding lessons when I was 8 years old, and I pretty much haven’t stopped since then.”
That includes riding and showing through college, medical school, being an emergency physician and running a startup business. Barb’s passion for horses and for helping people keeps her motivated to balance her work in the emergency department with her riding. “Believe it or not, there are lot of days when I go to the horse show in the morning, ride in some classes and then go to work at 3 o’clock,” she shared with a laugh.
To top it all off, for the last few years, Barb has also been running her own business: Electronic Vet, which combines her passion for electronic medical information and horses. “I have to tell you that this is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” she said. “It’s by far harder than medical school. It’s harder than being a doctor. I don’t have a business degree, but I’m trying my best to run this company.”
Barb Blasko
Clear Directions
Her parents bought Barb her first horse when she was 14: an Appendix Quarter Horse named Myrtle. “I started doing the little ‘B’ show circuit on Long Island and the equitation, and pretty much kept riding and showing all my life,” she said. “I rode Myrtle until I was 17 or 18; I worked for some trainers on Long Island as a groom and a braider to pay for my horse expenses.”
Showing wasn’t the only part of Barb’s life that took shape when she was a young teen. “My mom was diagnosed with lung cancer when I was 14,” she said. “I think seeing her have to be treated and have surgery, and interacting with her doctors really made me want to become a physician and help people. I wanted to help others that had similar illnesses to my mom and see if I could make their lives a little better.”
Barb set out to become a doctor, but she also kept riding through college on the SUNY Stony Brook equestrian team, and through medical school. “I didn’t have my own horse in college; it was just too expensive, but I did ride others’ horses to hack them and exercise them, and I kept doing some braiding and grooming in college and in medical school,” she said. “Honestly, horses have just been the piece of my life that allows me to focus on the rest of my life and my career. It’s my outlet.”
Another Passion
While working for a large hospital group in California, Barb was involved with transitioning from paper-based records to computer-based electronic medical records. “I fell in love with the technology,” she said. “I thought it was an amazing way to take care of patients, so I went back to school and got a degree in biomedical informatics and learned more about it.”
Barb created eVet to be a voice for horses and is pleased that big horse shows across the country have already implemented Electronic Vet.
With a new degree in hand, Barb began interviewing for positions in biomedical informatics. Around the same time, equine disease outbreaks were causing shows to mandate vaccines for horses entering the premises. “I had a horse that was going to a show on the West Coast, and I was on the East Coast, and they lost his medical records,” Barb remembered. “So before he could get into the show grounds, they revaccinated him. I was flying on a plane and no one could get ahold of me, and this horse was super sensitive. He had a really bad reaction and got very sick.”
The unfortunate and completely preventable event made Barb realize the technology she was using in the human medical world could be applied to the equine world. “I had been looking for a job as a chief medical informatics officer, and then that reaction happened with my horse and I started looking at the equine industry. I talked to some vets and found that some of the horses were getting vaccinated up to 19 times a year just to compete and adhere to the rules of all the different individual shows. I said, ‘I don’t want to be a chief informatics officer; I want to do something for the equine community.’”
Barb conceived the idea for Electronic Vet in 2013, and began developing the company in 2014 with a vision: create electronic vaccination records accessible by owners and show managers, eliminating the need for paper records. “Right around the next year was when the USEF made the rule change to requiring vaccinations every six months, and took it out of the show managements’ hands. It was a coincidence, and I thought, Wow, this is a great time for my company to be around because now we have a product that allows horses to comply with the USEF rule change.”
Barb competing JF Justinian at the HITS National Sunshine Series in Coachella, California
Photo by Ashley Andersen
Slow and Steady
Though the idea is simple and effective, it’s been a long road to getting the eVET Certificate off the ground. “I had to get a lot of people to believe in me,” Barb said. “I had to get some friends and family to help me with the finances and invest some money in the company. I went through probably three or four web developers before I found somebody who wasn’t going to rip me off and could actually help me. And then it’s balance, finding the time and money to devote to the company while still working in the ER to support the company; it’s not self-sufficient yet, so I’m still working in order to keep it going.”
This year particularly, Barb has been focusing on working with horse show managers to expand the use of eVET. “Most of the horse shows that we’ve talked to have really embraced it and really understand the benefit of it,” said Barb. Big name horse show managers and facilities like HITS, Blenheim EquiSports, the Colorado Horse Park and Palm Beach International Equestrian Center have already implemented Electronic Vet. “The horse show managers don’t pay anything and they all get their own custom portals and log-ons so the staff can log on and pull up all the horses’ vaccine records.”
Even if a specific show isn’t set up to look up vaccine records, the owners can pull them up to print or even email — and vets appreciate not getting late-night calls about lost records. “For me, it’s great. Electronic Vet allows me to take some of my expertise with medicine and combine it with my love for horses, and then bring this product to horse owners to really help them and give them a product that’s convenient. But it also allows me to help the horses indirectly: The horses are the ones that can’t speak for themselves, and if we can create tools to help them, that’s really my goal.”
Alongside Barb, Rob Jordan works as the chief operating officer of eVet, but it’s not his first experience with products for horses. “Over the years, I’ve seen so many ideas and products for the equine industry that I’m very skeptical of most things I encounter,” he said. “After my first conversation with Barb, I was blown away. Her vision for the future of digital biosecurity for the equine world was truly groundbreaking and, more importantly, desperately needed in horse sports. We all rely on our equine athlete partners to stay as healthy as possible, and Barb’s history as a physician on the ground floor of human medical informatics development allows her to see the future for our sport. She is truly a Steve Jobs-like figure at the vanguard of veterinary and show biosecurity.”
Balancing Careers
While getting Electronic Vet going, Barb balances her work in the hospital emergency department and riding — in two states. “I’m in California, and in June my trainer, Peter Petschenig, moved to Texas. So he’s in Texas with my jumper, but I’m fortunate to have a retired jumper that I keep here and do mostly dressage with. I still ride at least four days a week: I fly to Texas and do the jumpers, and I ride in California on my dressage horse.”
For Barb, the extra travel is worth it. “Before I started with Peter, I was really terrified to jump even the 1.10m,” she shared. “But he got me to the point where I really feel like I can do just about anything. Now I show in the 1.10–1.20m adult jumpers. He understands me, and he’s gotten me to a riding level I’ve aspired to but have never had the confidence to get to.”
Barb goes to at least one horse show a month, where her passions also tend to cross. “I’ve become the defacto horse show doctor; it’s inevitable. I’m at a horse show and I end up doing human medical care for people. That’s been kind of fun. I don’t mind it at all; I really don’t. I feel so lucky that I can help people. Being an emergency medicine doctor, I really can do almost anything that someone needs help with, and I think that’s really great.”
Looking to the future, Barb hopes to compete in the 1.30m, to own a grand prix horse for Peter to ride, and to have every USEF discipline horse on the eVET platform. She’s also working on a telemedicine platform so that vets and owners can communicate electronically in a secure, retrievable way. Ultimately, she wants to keep doing what she loves: helping people and horses by using her medical and informatics knowledge. “That’s definitely my passion,” she said. “Combining all of that has been amazing.”
For more information, visit electronicvet.com
Photos by Kristin Lee Photography, unless noted otherwise
