PIMS Fluency: Cornerstone vs AVImark vs ezyVet vs ImproMed

PIMS stands for practice information management system — the software a practice runs on for scheduling, medical records, invoicing, inventory and client communication.

Four names come up constantly in this conversation: Cornerstone, AVImark, ezyVet and ImproMed.

What a lot of practice managers don't realize going in is that these aren't four independent companies competing on equal footing.

As of this writing (retrieved 2026-09-16, directly from each company's own site), IDEXX owns Cornerstone, ezyVet, and a newer product called Neo. Covetrus owns AVImark, ImproMed, and a newer product called Pulse. Confirming this took nothing more than each vendor's own software pages — it isn't hidden, but it also isn't something either company puts front and center in a sales pitch, and it changes what questions are worth asking.

Laid out by parent company: IDEXX — Cornerstone, ezyVet, Neo. Covetrus — AVImark, ImproMed, Pulse.

Outside those two groups, Shepherd, Digitail and Provet Cloud are independent practice-management platforms with no ownership tie to either IDEXX or Covetrus.

That's the entire verified map, and it's worth being precise about what it doesn't include.

No independently published figure exists for what share of US veterinary practices run on any one of these systems, so every "market leader" claim circulating about a PIMS traces back to a vendor's own marketing rather than an independent survey.

Two products sharing a parent company doesn't make them the same product, and it doesn't automatically mean they integrate seamlessly with each other — but it's worth having on the table before you evaluate, for a few concrete reasons.

First, roadmap risk.

When a company owns multiple products in the same category, one is usually positioned as the long-term platform and the others get less investment over time.

Ask directly whether the product you're evaluating is still being actively developed, or whether the company is steering new customers toward a sibling product instead.

Second, procurement leverage.

If your practice already uses other IDEXX or Covetrus products — in-house lab equipment, pharmacy distribution, other software — ask whether that changes pricing, contract terms or support priority, in either direction.

Third, switching risk.

Moving from one IDEXX product to another, or one Covetrus product to another, may get framed by the vendor as an easier migration than moving to an outside competitor.

That may be true, but "easier for us to sell you" and "easier for your practice to execute" aren't the same claim — get the migration process described in writing rather than taking the framing at face value.

Outside the IDEXX and Covetrus portfolios, three vendors market directly to practices as independent practice-management platforms: Shepherd, Digitail and Provet Cloud.

None carries an ownership tie to either larger parent company, as of this writing.

Independence cuts both ways as an evaluation factor.

It means a decision about one of these products isn't also a decision inside a larger company's broader software strategy — but it also means less certainty about long-term backing, since none of the three has the balance sheet of a public diagnostics or distribution company behind it.

Neither fact is a verdict on its own; it's one more input alongside the demo, the contract terms, and what your own team makes of the day-to-day workflow.

Every one of these has a written answer the vendor can put in front of you before you sign — and a vendor unwilling to answer one of them in writing is itself useful information.

Switching PIMS is disruptive enough that most practices do it once a decade at most, which is exactly why it deserves the same diligence as a lease or a major equipment purchase — not a decision made off a single demo and a sales rep's slide about market share.