Switching from ImproMed to a cloud PIMS
ImproMed, the system many clinics still call Infinity, runs on a Windows server and a SQL Server database in the practice. Covetrus's own hardware guide and licence say exactly what that means. Here is what they say, what a managed move looks like day by day, and what changes on the first morning without the server.
Facts checked on the vendors' own pages, September 4, 2026 · written by the Bittsi team · sources at the end
- Your server and SQL Server licences are new, your IT partner is good, and the 250-report library is part of how you run the practice.
- You rely on a specific DICOM modality or state controlled-substance format that ImproMed already handles for you.
- You want to hold your own verifiable backup file on hardware you own.
- You want the server, the SQL Server licences, the USB backup drives and the after-hours IT calls gone, and the whole clinic in one browser system: records, hospital floor, anesthesia, dental, inventory, payments, messaging and the pet-owner app.
- You want the migration done for you and verified row by row, live in 14 days, with staff trained by role.
- You want the price on a page, month to month, and your data exported free whenever you ask.
One system. Nothing to integrate.
Everything below is built into Bittsi and priced on one page. Enter it once and it is everywhere it needs to be: the charge posts and inventory moves the moment a treatment is logged. The only integrations are the ones only a lab or a card network can provide: IDEXX, Antech and Bittsi Pay.
Records and charting
Structured SOAP with templates and dictation; vitals and weight trends; vaccines and certificates; prescriptions, refills and labels; consent forms; the invoice drafts itself from the note.
Also: How the visit flows →Hospital floor
A status board with TV mode and shift handoff; live treatment sheets with due times, owners, protocols and fluid alerts; Crash Card dosing by weight with a CPR recorder.
Anesthesia and dental
Vitals charted every five minutes from the monitor with the drug timeline beside them; Triadan dental charts that bill the procedures when completed.
Also: Dental chart →Inventory and purchasing
Batch-level tracking with automatic FIFO, recall trace in about 30 seconds, purchase orders grouped by supplier, cycle counts and COGS per line.
Money
Estimates that convert in one click, Bittsi Pay inside the invoice, next-business-day funding reconciled to invoices, QuickBooks and Xero export.
Clients
Two-way SMS, MMS and email in one thread per patient, reminder cadences that stop on confirmation, and the clinic-branded Companion app.
Also: Companion app →Reporting
Financial, appointment and inventory dashboards that refresh as charges post; shareable links, scheduled PDFs and exports.
AI in the record
Scribe writes the note and the draft invoice from the conversation; Sage briefs every appointment, flags interactions and lab trends, and reconciles close-out.
Also: Sage →What ImproMed's own documents say
Not our opinion of the product. What its owner publishes, with the source next to each point.
Who owns it
Covetrus, taken private by Clayton, Dubilier & Rice and TPG in October 2022 at about $4 billion of enterprise value. Separately, a merger with MWI Animal Health was announced in February 2026 and awaits regulatory approval. The product itself has changed hands and names before: ImproMed, LLC became Henry Schein Veterinary Solutions, "Our Infinity software is now branded as ImproMed", and today it is sold as Covetrus Impromed.[1][2][3][4][5]
What you are maintaining
From Covetrus's 2024 hardware specifications: a Windows Server 2016, 2019 or 2022 machine, and "Covetrus requires all operating systems to be on the most recent major release"; SQL Server Standard in its own instance, since ImproMed is "not supported using any SQL Express release"; 32 to 128 GB of server memory depending on practice size; workstations on Windows 10 or 11 Pro only; no wireless desktops; iPads and tablets only as remote-desktop thin clients.[6]
Backups and the hosted option, in Covetrus's words
"It is your responsibility to backup your Impromed data and electronic documents." The recommended regime is three external USB drives, one taken off the premises. Covetrus does offer a hosted server option and lists its disadvantages itself: "Owners are not in possession or control of their data/server", "you own nothing", and "NO local access to backups".[6]
What the licence says
The licence agreement Covetrus publishes, dated 2017 under the Henry Schein Veterinary Solutions name: a perpetual licence tied to one practice address, 40 percent of the price due with the agreement, software that "will become unusable" on non-payment, an optional maintenance plan cancellable on 30 days' notice, and a clause that the vendor "is permitted to access and use the data maintained on Customer's locally installed Software" and may share it with third parties in aggregated form. It contains no auto-renewal clause and no data-return clause.[7]
Side by side, from the published record
Every ImproMed cell carries a source number. “Not published” means the vendor does not say on the pages we checked; ask them, and get it in writing.
| Topic | Bittsi | ImproMed |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting and access | ||
| Where it runs | Cloud-native, built for the browser from the first line of code; any device, including phones; no server, no install, no nightly batch | On a Windows Server in the practice with SQL Server Standard; a hosted option exists whose disadvantages Covetrus lists itself[6] |
| Backups and updates | Handled; nothing to schedule or restore locally | Your responsibility: a daily SQL backup through the Impromed Database Manager plus three external USB drives recommended; a Covetrus backup service is sold separately[6] |
| Workstations | Any current browser on any device, including phones | Windows 10 or 11 Pro only; wireless desktops not supported; iPads and tablets as remote-desktop clients only[6] |
| Price and contract | ||
| Published price | Published, from $249 a month: Foundation $249 with one veterinarian included and $99 per additional veterinarian; Standard $379, or $249 with Bittsi Pay as the primary processor, $129 per additional veterinarian. Unlimited staff users on both. The pricing calculator is the bill, not an estimate | Not published; self-reported in 2021 as "varies based on training, configurations and integrations"[8] |
| Licence and term | Month to month; annual billing saves 10% and can be cancelled at renewal | Perpetual licence tied to the practice address; 40 percent due with the agreement; after the first three months, support fees quarterly or annual[7][9] |
| Setup and migration fees | No setup fee. One fixed migration quote before you sign, included with annual billing; a sandbox loaded with your own records before you commit | Not published; "varies" in the 2021 self-report[8] |
| Support | One named lead from signature through go-live, then a real person who replies, usually within one business day; engineers answer when a question needs one; demos are hosted by a working DVM | Phone Monday to Friday 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Eastern, chat 8 to 9; after hours is "a pager-based service" for an additional fee[9] |
| Your data | ||
| Getting it out | Your data is yours, always: exported free, in standard formats, whenever you ask; no hostage clause, written into the agreement | A full native SQL backup you can make and verify yourself in Support Tools; medical records export as PDF or email; reports to Excel, PDF and CSV; no portable structured export documented. Moving to Covetrus's own Pulse is a manual extract to sFTP with a two-week trial turnaround[10][11][12] |
| What moves to Bittsi | A named migration lead, one person from signature to go-live: clients, patients, visit history, prescriptions, reminders and balances moved, verified row by row against the old system, and you get the report | Clients, patients, visit history, prescriptions, reminders and balances are read from the ImproMed database and mapped field by field |
| What changes on day one | ||
| Documentation | Sage reads the whole chart: an overnight brief for every appointment, lab trends across panels, medication safety checks, close-out reconciliation of what was documented against what was billed, answers with citations. Scribe writes the SOAP note and the draft invoice from the exam-room conversation. Nothing is sent, billed, prescribed or signed without a clinician | Typed notes; no AI feature in any release note from version 6.0 in 2018 to 24.20.0 in December 2024[4][14] |
| Payments | Bittsi Pay inside the invoice: tap, dip, swipe, Apple Pay and Google Pay on the terminal; interchange-plus with the network cost and our margin on separate statement lines; next-business-day funding reconciled to invoices; refunds in-line; QuickBooks and Xero export; PCI-DSS Level 1 processor | XCharge, Worldpay and Vantiv integrations with card on file[4] |
| Clients | Built in: two-way SMS, MMS and branded email in one thread per patient; reminder cadences at 30, 7 and 1 days and day-of that stop when someone confirms; post-visit summaries and post-op check-ins drafted from the chart; mass campaigns; and the clinic-branded Companion app for pet owners | Covetrus Comms, formerly Rapport, a separate product; emails retained in the communication history[13] |
| Hospital floor | Built for the hospital floor: a status board for the whole floor with a TV mode and a printable shift handoff; a live treatment sheet for every hospitalized patient with due time and owner on every treatment, overdue in red, protocols for post-op, DKA and CHF, fluid rates with bag-change alerts, and one-click complete that signs, charts and captures the charge; Crash Card emergency dosing from patient weight with a CPR recorder; an anesthesia sheet that charts vitals every five minutes from Mindray, Edan, Bionet and SunTech monitors | Treatment plans and paperless workflows are listed; anesthesia and dental charting are not described on the pages we could reach[5] |
Bittsi prices from bittsi.com/pricing. Bold text marks the stronger side of a row where there is one.
What ImproMed does well
- A reporting library of more than 250 business and practice reports, with per-user report permissions.
- Unusually broad imaging support: a 36-page DICOM manual covering roughly thirty modality vendors, with modality worklist.
- Controlled-substance and regulatory tooling kept current with state ASAP formats, including microchip as the ID option.
- Serious inventory depth with closed-loop purchase ordering, and a Cubex cabinet integration.
- Bi-directional lab links added through 2024: Antech, Zoetis, Ellie, MicroVet, Midwest, Moichor, National Bio Vet and Vetek.
- The practice holds its own verifiable backup file, made and checked in the bundled Support Tools.
What a switch actually looks like
The same plan for every clinic that moves to Bittsi, with a date and an owner on each step. It is written into the Switch Guarantee.
- 01Before you sign: one fixed quote and a sandboxWe size the migration from your current system and load a sandbox with your own records. You click around your real patients, not a demo clinic.
- 02Days 1 to 3: exportYour data comes out of the old system while it keeps running. Nothing changes for the front desk.
- 03Days 3 to 8: mapping and importClients, patients, visit history, prescriptions, reminders and balances, mapped field by field. Anything that cannot be mapped cleanly is archived read-only and labelled.
- 04Days 8 to 10: verificationEvery record checked against the source, row by row. You get the report.
- 05Days 10 to 13: training by roleShort sessions for the front desk, technicians and doctors on the parts they touch, not an all-day shutdown.
- 06Day 14: go-liveOn a lighter day, with your launch lead on call. The old system stays readable for reference until you retire it.
Questions clinics ask about ImproMed and Bittsi
Can all my ImproMed history move?
Yes. ImproMed keeps everything in a SQL Server database on your own server, which our migration lead reads directly. Clients, patients, full visit history, prescriptions, reminders and balances move and are verified row by row against the source. Anything that cannot be mapped cleanly is archived read-only in Bittsi and clearly labelled.
How long does it take?
About 14 days from kickoff to go-live for a typical clinic: export and mapping in the first week, verification and role-based training in the second, then a supported go-live on a lighter day. Covetrus's own path from ImproMed to Pulse quotes a two-week trial turnaround before conversion even starts.
Do we need our IT company for the switch?
Only to give our lead access to the server for the export, and later to decommission it. There is nothing to install for Bittsi: it runs in the browser on the computers you already have, including Macs, tablets and phones, which ImproMed's hardware guide does not support natively.
What happens to the server and the SQL Server licences?
The server becomes a backup you keep for as long as your state's record-retention rule requires. The Windows Server and SQL Server licences, the client access licences and the terminal-services licences stop being an annual line item; there is no equivalent in Bittsi's price.
Is ImproMed being retired?
Covetrus has published no end-of-life notice for ImproMed, and we do not claim one; version 25.10.1 release notes are listed on its support page. What is sourced is where the new investment goes: Covetrus's AI announcements are for Pulse, its cloud product, while ImproMed has had no AI feature in any release note since 2018.
What does the migration cost?
One fixed quote before you sign, based on your database size. It is included with annual billing and always included for founding clinics. There is no hourly billing.
Sources
Every ImproMed statement above points to one of these. If a vendor page changes, tell us and we will change the row: info@bittsi.com.
- [1]Covetrus to be acquired by CD&R and TPG, Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, 2022.
- [2]Clayton, Dubilier & Rice and TPG complete acquisition of Covetrus, Covetrus, via SEC EDGAR, 2022.
- [3]Cencora Form 8-K, exhibit 99.1, Cencora, via SEC EDGAR, 2026.
- [4]ImproMed 6.0 release notes, Covetrus, 2018.
- [5]Covetrus Impromed product page, Covetrus, archived September 6, 2025, 2025.
- [6]Impromed hardware specifications, Covetrus, 2024.
- [7]ImproMed software licence agreement, V200.2.1, Covetrus (Henry Schein Veterinary Solutions, LLC), 2017.
- [8]Who's who in veterinary practice management software, Today's Veterinary Business, 2021.
- [9]Impromed support, Covetrus, archived March 13, 2026, 2026.
- [10]Impromed year-end processes for 2024, Covetrus, 2024.
- [11]Impromed and Impromed Equine business reports, Covetrus, 2023.
- [12]Pulse data conversion basics, Covetrus data-conversion documentation, 2026.
- [13]Impromed 24.11.0 release notes, Covetrus, 2024.
- [14]Impromed 24.20.0 release notes, Covetrus, 2024.
- [15]Impromed DICOM integrations, Covetrus, 2023.
- [16]Impromed inventory management, Covetrus, 2023.
- [17]Impromed 24.10.0 release notes, Covetrus, 2024.
ImproMed and the other product names on this page are trademarks of their owners, used only to identify their products. Bittsi is not affiliated with or endorsed by them. Vendor facts were read on the vendors' own pages on September 4, 2026 and can change; if you are the vendor and something is out of date, email info@bittsi.com and we will check it and correct the page within two business days.
See your own data in Bittsi before you decide.
One fixed migration quote, a sandbox loaded with your records, and a 30-minute walk through your real patients. No slides.