Speaker Biography

Maggie Canning

DVM

Dr. Canning

Chief Growth Officer at Pointer Health

Dr. Maggie Canning is Chief Growth Officer at Pointer Health, where she works to keep clinical and veterinary expertise embedded in precision medicine and prognostic technology. She began her career practicing small animal medicine across six states, then moved into industry at IDEXX, where she worked on data and AI-driven clinical decision support and disease prediction. Since then she’s spanned product, marketing, and team growth, often serving as the primary clinical voice translating between veterinary practice and technical teams. She’s co-founded several veterinary organizations, including AUCVM’s Alumni Affiliate Group and the VBMA Alumni Association, and maintains her clinical grounding as a practicing relief veterinarian. Maggie earned her DVM from Auburn University in 2016 and a BS from Vanderbilt University. She lives near Houston with her family, including fellow AUCVM graduate and veterinary dermatologist, Dr. Peter Canning. 

Lectures

  • Thursday, October 29, 2026 8:00 - 8:50 a.m. Oak II

    Beyond ChatGPT: AI 101 - The different types of AI found in veterinary medicine Emerging Topics

    While ChatGPT and other Large Language Model-based systems have become quite popular, in this lecture we will discuss the different types of artificial intelligence and explore their use in veterinary medicine. This will look at large language models and how they work while also introducing machine learning and deep learning modalities and introducing how AI tools are being built with them. Finally, we will share the responsible-use and critical-evaluation approach to AI being taught to students.

    Learning Objectives: 

    1. Describe the difference between LLM, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning
    2. Discuss what AI tools are being built using the different types of AI
    3. Describe responsible use and critical evaluation approaches being taught to students.

    Co-Speaker: Ryan Gibson, DVM, M.Ed, DACVIM (Neurology)

  • Thursday, October 29, 2026 11:00 - 11:50 a.m. Oak II

    Big Data and Bad Poetry: The Surprising Range and Future of AI in Veterinary Medicine Emerging Topics

    Thirty years ago, sending blood out and waiting days was normal practice. A chemistry analyzer on the counter was novel, expensive, and hard to justify. Today nobody looks at it twice. Veterinary medicine has a strong record of taking in new technology and making it ordinary, and we are in the early part of that curve again with AI.

    What is possible right now is wider than most people realize. You can build a working app by yourself with no software background. You can find disease patterns across thousands of records that nobody could see case by case. You can write a ridiculous poem about the surgery schedule and make your team laugh on a hard day.

    Think of AI as a pocket knife with several blades: language models, image recognition, predictive models, speech tools, and agents that string steps together. Each blade does something different, and knowing which is which is what makes creative use possible.

    Veterinarians are resourceful and primed to be innovative and ethical stewards of AI. This session explores present-day applications and futuristic examples of AI applications across clinical work, business growth, team culture, and more, with attention to both what you can try tomorrow and what we should be asking AI builders to create in the future.

    Learning objectives:

    1. Describe the range of what veterinarians are doing with AI today, from building working tools to finding disease patterns at scale to lifting the mood in a busy practice.
    2. Recognize non-obvious uses of AI across clinical work, practice operations, research, and everyday life in the clinic.
    3. Understand how veterinarians without software development experience are using AI to build tools of their own.
    4. Imagine what is coming next for veterinary medicine, from earlier disease detection to discoveries our profession is well positioned to make first.
    5. Identify at least one practical way to use AI in your life in the next week, and one way to help shape where these tools go next.

    Co-Speaker: Ryan Gibson, DVM, M.Ed, DACVIM (Neurology)