OpenVet Publishes the First Veterinary AI Safety Charter

Establishing a New Professional Standard for AI in Animal Health;
Now Available for Public Download

MIAMI, FL, UNITED STATES, January 12, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — OpenVet today announced the public release of the Veterinary AI Safety Charter, the first comprehensive framework to define how artificial intelligence should be designed, deployed, and governed in veterinary medicine.

The Charter sets out a clear professional boundary for clinical AI. Artificial intelligence may support veterinary care, but it must never replace clinical judgment, diminish the role of the veterinarian, or compromise the welfare of the animal patient.

Developed with input from practicing veterinarians and AI safety specialists, the Charter is offered as a shared professional reference point for the responsible use of veterinary AI. It applies specifically to clinical reasoning, retrieval, and explanation systems used under veterinary supervision, and explicitly excludes consumer chatbots and non-clinical content.

At its core, the Charter establishes that animal health and welfare is the primary constraint on all AI system design and use. It recognizes that veterinary medicine operates across a spectrum of care, and that AI systems must support informed clinical decision-making rather than impose a single course of action.

The Charter also takes a clear philosophical stance on the role of AI in the clinic. It rejects the idea that animals are merely data to be optimized, or that care can be reduced to automated outputs. Instead, it frames AI as a tool that supports the clinical relationship between veterinarian, patient, and caregiver, surfacing evidence and insight while preserving judgment, uncertainty, and professional responsibility.

“In veterinary medicine, you are responsible for a living being that cannot speak for itself,” said Adam Sager, Founder and CEO of OpenVet. “AI can surface evidence, reveal patterns, and reduce cognitive load, but it cannot carry moral responsibility. This Charter exists to make that boundary explicit. The veterinarian remains sovereign. The animal is not data. The system is a tool, not an authority.”

The Charter introduces the concept of high-risk output, defined as AI output that could materially influence diagnosis, dosing, treatment planning, surgical guidance, or emergency triage. These outputs are subject to enhanced safeguards, including explicit uncertainty, refusal when required information is missing, and clinician accountability for final decision-making.

Operational requirements outlined in the Charter include clinician-in-the-loop accountability for all high-stakes decisions, species-aware physiological and dosing constraints, traceability to verifiable veterinary evidence for high-risk outputs, and deterministic execution for safety-critical calculations and rule-bound operations.

“Guidelines and algorithms are only the beginning of care,” said Andrew Heller, DVM, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of OpenVet. “What matters is whether a system knows its limits, shows its reasoning, and stays within the biological reality of the patient in front of you. This Charter hard-codes those expectations into the design of the technology itself.”

The Charter also establishes governance and cultural commitments, including the formation of a Clinical Advisory Board of practicing veterinarians, a formal internal Safety Case to document and review system risk, and a just-culture approach to incident reporting that emphasizes learning over blame.

Rather than presenting safety as a one-time certification, the Charter frames it as an ongoing responsibility. The document is explicitly designated as a living standard that will evolve alongside veterinary practice, emerging evidence, and advances in AI.

The Veterinary AI Safety Charter is available for public download at www.openvet.ai/trust-and-safety. OpenVet invites veterinarians, professional associations, educators, and regulators to review the Charter and use it as a reference point for evaluating clinical AI systems.

Founders Heller and Sager will be attending VMX, introducing OpenVet to a broader veterinary audience and expanding OpenVet’s exclusive beta program.

About OpenVet
OpenVet is building the underlying medical intelligence infrastructure for animal health. The company decodes species complexity, fragmented evidence, and real clinical risk into a single computable medical framework. Its mission is to arm every veterinarian with the world’s best intelligence, empowering them to practice at the absolute limit of their potential. OpenVet turns veterinary knowledge into structured clinical intelligence that supports clarity, accountability, and patient safety at the point of care.

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