Frequently Asked Questions

The two obvious needs are a WRMD account and a device that connects to the internet. The third, and often most challenging requirement, is learning to adjust your daily routines around a new record management system. At first, the amount of data that you can keep in WRMD may seem overwhelming, but don’t let that intimidate you. At the very least, just record the required fields. You’ll be amazed what you can learn from just that. Then as you gain experience and time, record more data to benefit even more.

Find out more here…

WRMD is designed to work with ONLY wildlife patients. It is not designed to work with domestic animals or wildlife used in a collection setting like a Zoo or Wildlife Park where animals are on display.

If your country is not in WRMD just send us an email at [email protected]. We add countries as they ask. WRMD has a very extensive species database and we should have nearly every species available in the Common Name drop down menu. If you can not find a species email us and we will add it to the database.

Yes. A trial account is available for you to explore the Wildlife Rehabilitation MD service. You may log in with the following credentials:

Email: [email protected]

Password: Trial123

The trial view of Wildlife Rehabilitation MD is the very basic version of WRMD. There are many features we call extensions that can be turned on to extend your WRMD accounts abilities.

WRMD is FREE and we do everything we can to keep it that way. As long as we can limit WRMD to wildlife rehabilitation users and continue to receive generous donations from our supporters, we will keep it free. We recognize that this is a service of love to our community so that they can take better care of their wildlife patients.

Please do! Each year we must find the funds to keep this service available for free. If you are able, consider donating to Wildlife Rehabilitation MD.

Bottom line, your donation will be used to help us keep Wildlife Rehabilitation MD free. Big picture, your donation will help us with our maintenance and development costs. Wildlife rehabilitators across the world care for the hundreds of thousands of wild animals each year and WRMD helps them organize their data and use their data to help advance the field of wildlife rehabilitation. Your donations are needed and no amount is too little. This database is entirely community-driven and each year we must collectively support its growth.

Yes. We have made a significant investment in the latest web application security and data integrity services. Your data cannot be accessed from outside the Software. We also make regular backups of all data in WRMD. For a more detailed explanation of our security, visit Data Integrity.

Yes. While WRMD does a backup every day, you are welcome to export all your data at any time.

No. WRMD is a hosted software as a service. We securely host the database, and the software. You don’t have to install any additional database or software on your server. We do not yet have the ability to have an offline version of WRMD, however we hope to explore this option in the future.

One of the services we provide is reports for any governing body. All we need is an example of what information and format it is supposed to be and potentially a guide to what the fields information should be, if it is unclear.

Yes you can! We can import from a spreadsheet. We have a whole page dedicated to Imports here…

No, WRMD’s foundation is based on it’s numbering system and it can not be changed.

The only way to delete a record is for a Super Admin to enter Maintenance and from there they can delete the last record created in a given year. However, if that is not an option you can Void the record under Disposition which will remove it from your analytics, reports and searches.The other option is that you can re-write over the record with a new patient.

Yes, however we strongly encourage you to use the fields available in WRMD. By doing so, your data is following the same standards as other WRMD accounts and will ensure consistency of data collected on each patient. If there is data that you need to record but no appropriate field exists, then you have the option to add it to a few different sections. If you think there is a field that should be added permanently then let us know and we’ll see what the community thinks.

WRMD is becoming a very powerful tool. As of 2020 there are over 700 accounts and nearly 2 million patients in the database. There are a few projects in the works to better help researchers and authorities to act quickly if there are suspicious wildlife health events that have been detected through aggregate data. We hope that the data we collect can paint a better picture of what is happening with wildlife in the world and how we can better pinpoint where resources should go. Personally identifiable data is NEVER used.

Aggregate data is information that is looked at as a whole. For example what species came in during a given time period and compared to last year at the same time is there and increases in any particular species or how many Mallards went through wildlife rehabilitation last year. We hope to get to the point where we can actually quantify how many animals were cat caught or suffered from poison so that we can have proven statistics to help guide legislation for wildlife’s benefit. Aggregate data has no personally identifiable data within it. If there was ever a reason to gather more than aggregate data we ALWAYS ask permission from organizations before we proceed.

It’s a long story how we came to be. Suffice it to say, we’re here now.

At first learning a new system is not easy. Protocols and policies may have to be adjusted, new terms may have to be learned, there may be changes in paperwork and it will likely be difficult. However, the power and ability that comes with clean data will provide you with countless opportunities that paper records or smaller handmade databases could never give you. Questions can be answered quickly, reports can be done with the click of a button, you will never have a record eaten by a raccoon again. While the up front effort may be intense, the benefit once you have WRMD in place will be invaluable, at least that is what our users tell us.

WRMD is not for everybody and that is okay, but if you want to use it but are intimidated by it, don’t be. We have designed WRMD with our communities needs at the highest priority. We continue to update and evolve as our community does so. We are here to answer all of your questions either by email or group meeting. We have been known to travel to organizations that really need our help to get them started or just for a chat. We love our community of wildlife rehabilitators and we want what is best for them, for the patients in our care and for the wildlife who are fighting for survival in this turbulent world.