Using 10 photos, David Babington, former founder and Managing Director of Improve International, walks us through the company’s history. Beginning with brochures and ending with AI for the future, take a walk through the history of the international provider of veterinary continuing professional development.
1) Interactive modules become available for the first time
As I write this article, it’s been 26 years, almost to the day, that Improve International, or Improve CPD as it was back then, was registered at Companies House. It started off as a crazy concept for a series of interactive clinical education modules to support vets studying for a postgraduate qualification. No one else was doing this at the time, so it had to be a good idea!
The “Improve” name was an acronym from the then strapline, “Interactive Modules for Progressive Veterinary Education” – a great team quiz question!
I still have the first brochure which details 18 face-to-face courses, covering small, farm and equine practice topics (Figure 1). We were fortunate at the start in that we received huge support from leading veterinary specialists who helped to design and teach these first programmes.
2) A new accrediting and awarding body is launched in the UK
Five years after Improve was launched, the very clever Gary England, who is now the Dean of Nottingham Vet School, came up with the idea of establishing a new accrediting and awarding body. Therefore, in 2003 the European School of Veterinary Postgraduate Studies (ESVPS) was born.
ESVPS has since become the International School of Veterinary Postgraduate Studies (ISVPS) (Figure 2), and its most popular award, the General Practitioner Certificate (GPCert) for veterinary surgeons, is internationally recognised as indicating the ability to practise at a high standard in that subject.
Some individuals who began their postgraduate studies with Improve and ISVPS have gone on to achieve diplomas or specialist status and have even become part of our faculty of expert speakers. To date, over 8,500 veterinarians across more than 20 countries have achieved a GPCert qualification, and ISVPS now also offers several awards for veterinary nurses and paraprofessionals.
3) Improve goes international!
During the first few years of running Improve, the focus was on expanding the company in the UK, both in terms of the range of courses and the venues offered. Having started with solely modular programmes, a series of one- and two-day courses, including hands-on practical workshops, were added to the portfolio. From the original base in Hertfordshire, further venues in Swindon and Leeds were acquired. Although we were excited at the way the company was growing, we all felt that if we were to build Improve into a solid and sustainable business, we had to start looking at expanding our veterinary education to other countries.
A chance meeting at a veterinary congress in 2006 led to a partnership with Jan F Andersen, a veterinary wholesaler in Norway. Soon afterwards, we ran our first modular programme on small animal practice at Hønefoss (Figure 3), a town north of Oslo. This was followed shortly after with another small animal practice course near Milan, Italy, in partnership with an Italian veterinary association.
Improve CPD Ltd became Improve International Ltd!
4) When David met Heber!
Running our first modular programmes in Norway and then Italy confirmed our belief that many veterinarians across Europe were looking for the same thing we were providing in the UK: they wanted to develop their skills and knowledge in a chosen area of practice. This meant they were seeking structured training programmes that helped them gain a real improvement in their clinical ability.
Then, in the summer of 2006, I first met Heber Alves (Figure 4). Heber, a veterinarian based in Portugal, had been following what Improve was doing in the UK and contacted me to arrange a visit. We met at Improve’s offices at The Old School, Cricklade, near Swindon, and adjourned to the next-door pub to chat over a pint. Heber was excited about the possibility of running similar modularised training programmes in Portugal and Spain. We worked closely together to set up a series of programmes for Portugal which were immediately popular.
A fellow vet friend of Heber’s, Rui Lobao, joined a year later and helped to establish our operations in Germany and France.
5) Improve International’s first licensee in Denmark
Just like Heber, who had been watching Improve from afar, a well-known Danish vet named Rene Ipsen (Figure 5) was also doing his research in the early 2000s. Rene had just opened a brand-new veterinary hospital at Karlslunde, 25km southwest of Copenhagen. Alongside the superb clinical facilities, Rene and his business partner Thomas Egulund had built a spacious lecture room and practical skills teaching lab.
Howie Seim (professor of surgery at Colorado State University), who had previously spoken for Improve in the UK, had been invited to lecture at Karlslunde. After the lecture, Rene explained to Howie that he was looking to collaborate and create a partnership with a company to provide courses for vets and vet nurses in his country. Howie advised that he should contact David Babington in the UK, so Rene called me, and I visited Denmark shortly afterwards. We sat in the office at Karlslunde, drinking schnapps and discussing courses for Scandinavia. A plan was quickly hatched!
Rene has become a firm friend, and we regularly meet up to enjoy life! We have similar beliefs in that we both feel it is important to make the journey as fun as the destination.
6) New offices and a new clinical training centre
We loved our time at The Old School House in Cricklade but there were serious limitations with an old Grade 2 listed building. A lack of parking, sloping ceilings and small practical rooms meant that it was difficult to cope with the growing number of delegates attending our courses. However, we were fortunate to find a conference hotel just south of Swindon with spare capacity. So, in 2009 a new lease was agreed to rent a wing of Alexandra House, Wroughton, just outside Swindon. Set on the site of an old RAF hospital on the edge of the Marlborough Downland, Alexandra House was a pleasant place to work. Steeped in history, the site had experienced a lot of events; there were even rumours of a ghost that would appear occasionally in one of the bedrooms!
Over the last two years, Improve has opened new state-of-the-art training centres – one in Madrid and another in Frankfurt. Both facilities are equipped with the latest audio-visual aids and their spacious teaching areas help delegates enjoy an excellent learning experience. After this, almost 15 years after the move to Alexandra House, it became clear that Improve needed a new HQ. More room was required both for delegates and for the growing number of employees. We are very excited to have moved to a new, bigger and better-equipped facility in Swindon at Delta 1200, Delta Business Park (Figure 6). The official opening of our new Clinical Excellence Centre was held on 1 July 2024.
7) Working for the government
A chance phone call in the autumn of 2014 first alerted us to the fact that Defra – the UK government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – was looking to outsource the training and assurance of Official Veterinarians. We decided to apply and several months later, found that it had been awarded to Improve (Figure 7)!
The initial excitement soon turned to a degree of apprehension as reality kicked in and we realised that we had to deliver the first courses within a very short period. Not only that, but all of them were to be made available online.
We quickly recruited digital learning experts, and in just nine months, Improve developed 12 new Official Control Qualifications (OCQs) with accompanying online examinations. To date (nine years later!), over 21,000 OCQ(V) qualifications have been awarded, and in 2020, Improve successfully won the re-tender for the contract.
8) Setting the Benchmark!
Early in 2015, Improve was bought by a UK plc called Benchmark (Figure 8). Although Benchmark was a company whose main activity centred on the aquaculture sector, it had plans to get more involved with large and small animals, with the aim of bringing a holistic approach to animal health and production. Perhaps unusually, all the management team remained with Improve under the new ownership, and we continued to develop the business, expanding out of Europe into countries such as Japan, Australia, America and China.
The Benchmark years also saw us branch out into other areas of training. We developed a new modular online programme covering the health and welfare of Atlantic salmon. This involved several trips to Scotland, filming on fish farms and driving through simply stunning scenery.
9) The COVID-19 years!
Who could have foreseen a worldwide pandemic and the repercussions that the COVID-19 virus caused at so many levels? Almost overnight, we were unable to run any face-to-face programmes (Figure 9). While Improve had already identified the need for digitising its core modular programmes online, the COVID-19 pandemic catalysed this transformation.
In response to the need for digital training, the small digital development team was expanded to over 50 skilled individuals, based mainly between Swindon and our office in Porto, Portugal.
Over the course of three years, we developed fully online versions of all our core postgraduate certificate programmes, translating them into Spanish, German and French.
10) The future?
The future for veterinary continuing education (CE/CPD) is exciting and the company is already using many artificial intelligence tools plus augmented reality (Figure 10).
During 2020 and 2021, it became clear that veterinary professionals really wanted a blended approach to their postgraduate education and Improve has embraced this demand. Most of our programmes now include online components, and many combine online theory sessions with hands-on attended practical workshops.
Augmented reality has transformed the way that we develop our online lessons, introducing new interactive elements and helping to ensure that the learning is as engaging as possible. We believe that virtual reality will play a big role in education going forward and that vets and nurses will be able to learn key practical techniques in a safe virtual environment, enabling them to practise and review core skills at their convenience.
Along with our investment in the new Clinical Excellence Centre in Swindon, which features two surgical wet-lab training theatres and a radiography suite, we continue to push the boundaries and possibilities for training and education for veterinary professionals.
I very much look forward to watching Improve International continue to grow in the future and helping many more veterinary professionals from across the world develop greater confidence and ability in their clinical work.
| For more information about Improve Veterinary Education and their training please visit their website. |
