Awe and Sadness
Every time I visit a veterinary clinic, I feel two competing emotions: awe and sadness.
The awe comes from watching the people of veterinary medicine and what they do day-to-day. I once watched a foreign body surgery on a Chihuahua. Towards the end, the surgery went sideways as the patient's blood pressure started dropping fast. The surgeon acted with precision and calm, the team was fast and supportive, and the patient survived.
“Wow — well that was dicey… Hey by the way, that thing you were telling me about earlier… what if we…”, says the surgeon a few minutes after he's scrubbed out.
My mind was still processing what just happened. The surgeon, however, had already moved on. This was the way vet professionals operate. It is insanely impressive.
My sadness comes from watching what happens next — the in-between care stuff. I watched the surgeon walk to the other room and pull up to his computer. Click. Click. Click. Double click. Furious typing. Click click click. A few minutes go by. “Fluffy is ready for you now” a team member reports. Rinse, repeat, all day long.
Why are the software tools so bad?
In my view, “bad veterinary software” is not just the 30 year old PIMS you're using. You'd have similar experiences on a modern PIMS. Sure, some software is easier and faster to use than others. Regardless of tool vintage, you're still on the computer for cumulative hours each day. You have to use the software, which takes real time and attention to operate. This causes workflow tension: your eyes and mind are focused on operating software, but your job is rooted in the physical world.
This idea echoes the core discovery we made at Scribenote in December 2019. At the time, dictation — i.e., slowly speaking into a microphone — was popular but only a small percentage of vets were dictating. “Dictating is not as fast for me as just typing” said my big sister Dr. Katie, and so did many other veterinarians like her. She was always getting home late after catching up on medical records. When I followed her to the clinic to see if I could help as an engineer, I had my first big idea: that an AI listening to the appointment and writing a note on Katie's behalf was inevitable. In a few years — I bet ten — it would not make sense for a veterinarian to use dictation or canned templates over an AI Scribe.
So far we are on track for this prediction to be true.
AI Scribing took off so quickly in vet med because it was so easy! Just click a button, then review your SOAP. Increasingly smart AI eventually learned how to write your notes, then how to write notes your way. Sometimes you felt it read your mind.
Bad Software
I say this without condemnation — I build vet software for a living! While we designed Scribenote to be delightful, easy-to-use software, every day we face reality in customer support inquiries. Our users don't always find our software obvious. They don't always find it can do anything they need, because it can't. Nothing could. What our customers needed was for their computer to take on a 10-minute long set of digital tasks through natural language, and have it execute correctly through to completion and review. A digital brain.
We have been working on a digital brain for the vet clinic for a long time. We call it Companion.
We released an early version of Companion as a free beta last year. It could summarize your histories, edit your records and templates, and do veterinary research on the internet for you. This is helpful, but not enough. A sufficiently good brain can handle anything reasonably within the bounds of veterinary medicine on your behalf. We believe we are close to building that brain.
We think Companion will transform veterinary medicine even quicker than our first product, Scribenote. Companion is aware and intelligent. It can learn YOUR preferences and remember them. Companions cost treats — i.e. usage credits — that help you pay for what you use in intelligence. Teams will be able to use it to attack their biggest bottlenecks and make care run much smoother. We'll start with tasks within Scribenote, but we think soon we'll be able to take on any task on your computer.
In short order — I bet less than 2 years — we will not only free veterinary staff from mundane admin tasks, but also help them spend more time with pets and pet parents. That's the idea behind the clinic's digital brain.
Our mission is to decrease the cost of veterinary care while helping veterinary professionals spend more time doing what they love. Companion is our love letter to that mission.
Companion is here. Get started for free at app.scribenote.com — your first 500 Treats are on us.
