We know it well: clinical care doesn’t end when the patient leaves the room. The hours spent updating records, completing treatment notes, and managing administrative documentation can often exceed the time spent directly caring for animals and instructing their caregivers.
Good medical notes are the backbone of veterinary care. They guide treatment, support communication across the team, and protect both the patient and the practice. A complete record captures the full medical history of the pet, helping vets make better decisions throughout the animal’s life. Over time, documentation moved from handwritten charts to digital records, but the pressure to keep up has only grown.
As veterinary practices face increasing caseloads and growing demands for precise, thorough record-keeping, a new digital assistant has been introduced: Veterinary AI scribes.
What Are Veterinary AI Scribes?
Veterinary AI scribes are software designed to listen during consultations and automatically generate structured clinical notes. They use advanced speech recognition and large language models to transcribe the conversation between the veterinarian and the pet caregiver and create structured clinical records of the encounter, often in real time. They filter out irrelevant dialogue and organize the content according to clinical workflows. At the end of the consultation, veterinarians review the AI-generated notes, correct any inaccuracies, and finalize the documentation before adding it to the patient’s official medical record. Developers are expected to expand their capabilities to include features like automated consultation summaries, discharge instructions, and follow-up bookings.
Key Benefits for Veterinary Teams
The concept of AI scribes is still relatively new, but several products have already entered the market. Early experiences suggest that AI scribes could offer real benefits for clinical workflows, patient care, and team efficiency. Below, we look at some of the key advantages these tools could bring to veterinary practice.
1. Reducing Administrative Burden
Veterinary practitioners often spend long hours outside of appointments catching up on medical records, revisiting the histories of hospitalized patients, and documenting notes from the day’s consultations. By automating large parts of the documentation process, AI scribes can dramatically reduce the time spent on these tasks, allowing veterinarians to focus more on patient care.
2. Standardizing Documentation and Enhancing Practice Efficiency
Beyond saving time, AI scribes help bring more consistency to clinical records. The notes they generate can be customized using templates, making it easier to create comprehensive and standardized documentation across clinics and hospitals. This improves accuracy, and ensures that medical records are clear, complete, and easy to understand. Having well-structured notes also makes it much easier to revisit a patient’s history. Clinicians can quickly review past treatments and decisions without struggling to interpret different writing styles or missing information. This supports better continuity of care and helps teams work more efficiently.
3. Improving Communication with Pet Caregivers and Enhancing Care
When documentation no longer dominates the veterinarian’s attention during the consultation, communication with pet owners can improve. As a result, pet owners will more likely understand better the diagnosis, the treatment plan, and follow-up instructions. This shift can strengthen trust, improve compliance with care recommendations, and ultimately lead to better outcomes for pets.
Challenges and Considerations
As these tools evolve, they also raise questions about accuracy, privacy, integration, and clinical responsibility.
1. Accuracy and Oversight
AI-generated notes still require close review. Studies in human healthcare have shown high rates of errors and the need for manual editing, especially when dealing with complex conversations, accents, or ambiguous language. In veterinary settings, where patient cues are observed and interpreted via the caregiver, context matters, and AI can misinterpret it. Hallucinations, or completely fabricated content, remain a known risk. For this reason, clinicians must always verify and finalize all AI-generated documentation. AI scribes are support tools, and not replacements for clinical judgment. Final responsibility for the content of the medical record always lies with the veterinarian. Practices must ensure appropriate oversight, especially when using tools that suggest clinical actions or summaries. Clear protocols, staff training, and a cautious approach are key to avoiding over-reliance.
2. Data Privacy and Consent
Veterinary records also contain sensitive information — about the animal, the owner, and sometimes the care context. Any tool that processes clinical conversations must meet high standards for data protection, including encryption, access control, and transparency about data use. Practices should always be ready to explain how data is handled and stored.
3. Equity and Bias
AI models may perform inconsistently across languages, dialects, or speaking styles. This can be especially relevant in international clinics, mobile practices, or diverse communities. It’s important to monitor whether the technology works well for all users, and to ensure it doesn’t inadvertently exclude clients. AI scribes could make a real difference in how veterinary teams manage their workload, improve documentation, and communicate with pet owners. But their benefits will only be realized with careful oversight, clear protocols, and strong data protection. With responsible use, they can support clinical teams, helping shift the focus back to what matters most: quality care.