PetDesk Scribe: the future of AI-powered veterinary note-taking

Sponsored by PetDesk

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: Hey everyone! Dr Adam Christman, Chief Veterinary Officer here at DVM360. We're live here in Charlotte Convention Center in Charlotte, North Carolina, and we are chatting with our friends here at PetDesk because it's Product360. We have PetDesk Scribe, the future of AI-powered veterinary note-taking. Joining us is Mary Schwartz, CVT, Manager of Sales Enablement at PetDesk. Thanks so much for being here.

Mary Schwartz, CVT: Thanks for having me, Adam.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: My pleasure. This is beautiful. Listen, AI is all the rage right now, and dictation software is around. I love that we're chatting about improving workflow. We have inefficiencies that are there, so can you introduce us a little bit to PetDesk Scribe and talk about its inception?

Mary Schwartz, CVT: You mentioned workflow and I think that’s really important. A lot of the tools that PetDesk offers are around workflow. They're here to make the day-to-day life and practice easier, but one thing that we want to focus on going forward is veterinarians as well, right? So, our communication tools—they help front desk, they help technicians, and they help veterinarians some. Scribe is here to really optimize veterinary workflows, get you out of the hospital on time, get your notes taken for you, and do it accurately, so you don't have to do a lot of edits.

So, how it works is very easy. You'll have the Scribe app on your phone. You'll be able to hit “Start Appointment” when you go in the exam room. It'll start recording your appointment right there in the room. It'll capture the entire dialogue and natural chat with the pet parents you’re working with. When you're done, you stop and finalize your appointment, and then it'll go right into our web browser. And then it's ready for your review as the doctor. So, by the time you wrap up in the room, talk to your techs about the checkout process, and go to sit down at your desk, your notes are done.

Adm Christman, DVM, MBA: Wow!

Mary Schwartz, CVT: Fast and easy.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: And this does help you reduce some of that administrative burden, right?

Mary Schwartz, CVT: Yes, absolutely. I have plenty of friends who are veterinarians, and they absolutely are still doing notes at home. I had one last night who texted me that they couldn’t go out with their friends because they were sitting at home having to do notes after a long Friday, and I'm sure you know plenty of friends of your own that have that same problem.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: Yes, and you keep hearing these great stories about getting home on time, and how it's shaving two hours out of your busy day, so you can pick up the kids from school, do some of the things that are really important to your own personal life. It’s so important.

Mary Schwartz, CVT: Exactly. You spend so much time and effort becoming a veterinarian, and you invest so much of your life into it to begin with. You want, at some point, to have a little bit of that payback, where you can spend some time with your family and develop your personal life. We’re here to help.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: Walk us through this a little bit, getting started with PetDesk Scribe and integrating it into the existing workflow.

Mary Schwartz, CVT: You go in the room, you record the appointment—quick and easy. By the time you get back to your desk, your appointment should be ready to review, and it is lined out as a SOAP note—all ready to go, everything that you verbalized in the room. One thing that's really cool about this, just to differentiate between dictation tools and AI note-taking, is you don't have to dictate to this. You don't have to say, “Ear, nose, and throat are clear. The GI system is within normal limits.” You don't have to say those things. All you have to do is tell the pet parent, “Grover's tummy feels really good today. I'm not feeling any problems here. His ears look great. His eyes are nice and clear.” And this will automatically pick it up and turn it right into a note for you, and you can edit if you need to. But, that's one of the things we're working really hard on, making it so you don't have to edit much. Then you copy and paste them right into the medical note in the practice management software.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA:Look at this. It's got high-quality accuracy, too, which is incredible.

Mary Schwartz, CVT: That's our main focus: the accuracy and quality of those notes. It doesn't do us much good to send you back to your desk with something that you have to spend another 30 minutes editing.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA:Are these customizable?

Mary Schwartz, CVT: Yes, so this is going to be customizable. Our first premier product, which is going to be released in May of 2025 for all general customers, and then in April of 2025 for PetDesk customers, is going to have this format, so the typical SOAP format. But long-term what we're looking at is customizing templates and being able to add a lot more unique phrases or formats to how each practice does their medical notes.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: And there are some that are out there. What sets this from other ones that might be out there?

Mary Schwartz, CVT: The biggest thing for us is quality, right? I know I've been hounding on that, but it's so important, because we don't want you to have to sit down at your desk and edit. So, the goal here, and what we're finding a lot with our initial user group, is that the quality is already really high, but there's a little bit of room for improvement. So, by the time we get to our general launch in May, we're going to have really high-quality medical notes that don't require a lot of editing and allow you to get out on time and reduce your time spent charting.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: And customization too.

Mary Schwartz, CVT: Yes, and customization as well.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: That's a nice, sweet spot right there, which is really good.

Mary Schwartz, CVT: Absolutely.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: PetDesk has so many different offerings within its umbrella. To those of you who are thinking about it, or think about making the decision…why PetDesk?

Mary Schwartz, CVT: So, one of the things that's going to make PetDesk Scribe powerful is the additional tools that we have, and the future integrations into those tools. Think about how AI note-taking could empower client communications, could do follow-up messaging for you—and even at our initial launch, we're going to have a client summary for you to send home with your pet parents of the entire appointment. If you start embedding this across different areas of our platform, it can be helpful with our phone system, our client communication system, and then being able to integrate into PIMS. So eventually, you don't even have to copy it. You just approve it and it's in your medical record, and you don't have to do anything else.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: The number one concern that we see with pet owners out there—I'm sure many of you know this—is miscommunication.

Mary Schwartz, CVT: Yes.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: “I wasn't told this. No one told me. This was miscommunicated.” This helps. This is what helps.

Mary Schwartz, CVT: Yes.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: I mean, this is what really, really helps to make sure everyone is aligned. This is incredible.

Mary Schwartz, CVT: Absolutely, and you think about how adults learn and retain. Verbal is very low, but now we send them home with something that's in their pocket. You can text it. You can email it. They're not going to set it on the counter and forget it as soon as they get home, or have it get swept into the recycling bin. They're going to have it to pull up. If they can't remember what happened with Grover's appointment, it's right there in their phone. They can glance through it, and then they can text you with any questions they might have.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: That's wonderful. Just thinking about it, too, my friends—how often is the primary caregiver in the exam room?

Mary Schwartz, CVT: How often is it the husband who hardly knows the animal's name?

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: Right, because we know that sometimes they're just not there, so now everybody's aligned when we have these instructions that are being sent home with them. That way they know, “No, I wasn't told this. Oh, here it is. It's right here.”

Mary Schwartz, CVT: How many times is the primary caregiver not there, and then you as the doctor end up having to tell the person in the room what's going on and then contact the primary caregiver in addition? Now, it’s all in one place—easy and ready to go home.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: Mary, this has been fantastic, where can we learn more about this?

Mary Schwartz, CVT: Really easy, Adam. So, you can go to PetDesk.com/scribe-release. Here we'll have a way for you to join our wait list. You can view a little bit more about how scribe works. Check it out, we've already got some testimonials from our initial users that you can look at and all of our benefits, how we're going to help you out. All you have to do is fill out this form right here, hit submit, and then when we release, we'll ship you an email and you'll get six months half off.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: Oh, wow, that's great. Thank you so much. Fantastic information. If you haven't checked out PetDesk, you really need to their portfolio is absolutely incredible, and this is what I love about veterinary medicine; it's how we advance together. So, thank you, Mary, and thank your friends at PetDesk for supporting this great conversation. And we'll see you next time right here on Product360. Take care, everyone.