AI for Veterinarians in 2026: Late SOAPs, Callbacks and X-Rays

AI can turn an exam-room conversation into a SOAP draft before you leave the building, flag patterns in a lab panel, screen a radiograph and answer the clinic phone at 2 a.m. It can't examine the patient or carry the diagnosis, and radiology's own colleges say no commercial imaging AI yet meets their standards.

Picture the end of a clinic day: three charts open at 8 p.m., two owners waiting to hear about bloodwork, a referral letter you promised the surgeon this morning. Here that pile is sorted job by job, along with the rules that actually apply to animal records.

Where a veterinarian's hours go after the last appointment

The admin sits on top of a long clinical day. The BLS handbook says most veterinarians work full time, often more than 40 hours a week, some with nights, weekends and emergencies. O*NET's occupation page pairs reading radiographs and ultrasound with advising owners, counseling them on euthanasia and, for owners of a practice, scheduling, payments and business records. Each visit can then leave a chart, a call to return, a go-home sheet and sometimes a line in the drug log.

Before paying for a veterinary AI scribe, test the trip back into your PIMS

A scribe saves evening time only if the finished note lands on the right patient without retyping, so check that before comparing prices. CoVet's integrations page names 16 systems but describes the mechanism for six, among them ezyVet, Shepherd and Animana. For AVImark and Cornerstone it says only that a workflow is supported, and its browser extension's one-click paste isn't an automatic write-back. Ask to watch a note go across on your own version.

CoVet charges $550 a year for Essentials (up to 100 generations a month) or $1,188 for Unlimited. Scribenote has a free plan on standard models and a Pro tier for each DVM; its page shows both $79 and $99 a month, and a January 2025 post ties $79 to annual billing.

Two questions belong in the same call. On ownership, IDEXX announced it had bought CoVet on September 16, 2026, and says CoVet will keep integrating with non-IDEXX systems; if you use another lab or PIMS, get that into your contract. On recordings, an AVMA news report quotes a speaker urging caution with exam-room transcription software, because the data could be sold to a drug company or used to monitor how veterinarians perform. Ask who may use your audio, for what, and for how long.

Treat time savings as a hypothesis. CoVet's home page advertises more than 2 hours a day, while its pricing article offers an illustrative one hour and one hospital's case study, with no method on that page. Your own chart-closing time is the number that counts.

Radiograph AI: the radiologists' position comes first

The American College of Veterinary Radiology and the European College of Veterinary Diagnostic Imaging say AI should always be used with a qualified veterinary professional in the loop, and that there is "no commercially available product" for diagnostic imaging meeting their standards. Those cover safe handling of patient data, disclosure of methods and training sets, and monitoring after deployment. The statement is open access in JAVMA.

That doesn't make the tools useless on a busy Saturday; it tells you how to hold them. Antech calls RapidRead a diagnostic support tool, sends certain emergent findings for STAT review at no added cost, and covers the thorax, abdomen and limbs of dogs and cats, so a rabbit or a horse needs another plan. SignalPET says it routes AI-uncertain cases to a board-certified radiologist for free, and its page doesn't state species.

A sensible habit: read the film yourself, then open the report. When the two disagree on something that would change treatment, send it to a person. Ask each vendor for performance by finding and species, not one overall accuracy number.

HIPAA doesn't cover animal records, but state rules do

HIPAA defines the individual as the person who is the subject of protected health information, so a pet's chart falls outside it, as CoVet's records guide also says. OpenVet describes its HIPAA protections as applied by choice. A HIPAA badge on a veterinary vendor's page is a security claim, then, and your legal duties come from elsewhere:

• Confidentiality. California's section 4857 bars a licensed veterinarian from disclosing information about an animal patient, its client or its care without client authorization, with listed exceptions. AVMA's digest of state laws shows how this varies. Ask your board or attorney whether sending a chart to a software vendor needs consent.
• The veterinary-client-patient relationship (VCPR). AVMA's ethics principles have the veterinarian assume responsibility for medical decisions after a timely in-person exam. Its model practice act adds treatment oversight and maintained records, and says the relationship can't be established solely by telephone or other electronic means. A phone agent can book the visit; it can't stand in for the exam. AVMA's reporting describes its AI task force as still developing principles, and state definitions control.
• Recording consent. Section 632 of California's Penal Code requires all parties' consent before a confidential conversation is recorded, which can reach the exam room and the callback. One practice in an AVMA forum report offers a consent document at check-in.
• Drug information at discharge. New York's Education Law section 6715 requires the drug's name and description, directions including missed doses, storage and common adverse effects for dogs, cats and rabbits on first prescribing, with the method noted in the record. California's section 4829.5 requires offering a consultation and charting the client's answer. Check any generated sheet against your statute yourself.
• Controlled substances. DEA rules need records kept at least two years, Schedule I and II separately, and a new inventory at least every two years. California's board adds log details and a longer period. A dose in a generated SOAP is not your log entry.

Some of the day shouldn't be handed over at all. The euthanasia conversation, the talk about what an owner can afford, and whether a vomiting dog comes in tonight all rest on judgment and on knowing that family.

Merlin in a veterinary practice: useful around the medicine, absent from it

Merlin, the Mac assistant from the team behind this page, works on your mail and calendar. It doesn't answer calls or text clients, and it does no practice-management, invoicing or medical-record work, so it replaces nothing in the table above. CoVet's list includes a practice management system also called Merlin; that's a separate product with no link to this one.

What it can do is track what a practice owner or medical director owes other people:

• Who's still waiting. Email sent directly to you that has waited between two and 30 days surfaces in the Needs you list: the specialist asking for a history, a relief veterinarian about next month. A callback by phone isn't visible to it, so an owner you already rang can still appear.
• Replies you approve. Have chat draft a note to the referral hospital, then edit and confirm it on the card that appears; nothing leaves before that. Routines, which are recurring chores Merlin handles unattended, can send with no card, so keep those to summaries for yourself.
• Briefs before a call. A Meeting Brief lands shortly before a calendar event with earlier threads and commitments, handy before a lab rep, an associate candidate or a practice broker.
• One-off nudges. "Remind me on March 1 to schedule the biennial count" works as a reminder. The log itself stays where the DEA can inspect it.
• Business calls. Recording is on every plan, transcripts on paid ones from $29 a month. It isn't a scribe and its notes don't reach a chart, so leave it out of the exam room, and the recording-consent rule above still applies. For meetings away from patients, our AI note taker roundup lays out the options.

Choose the connected inbox with care. Merlin is Mac-only, works through Google, and reads the Gmail you connect. Its privacy policy says it sends the context needed for AI requests to the providers handling them, and says nothing specific to veterinary records. If clients write to that address about their animals, take the confidentiality question above to your board or attorney first, or connect a separate account with only business mail. If the books are the bigger headache, try AI for bookkeepers.

How to start with veterinary AI this week

Pick the one job costing you the most evenings. If that job is charting, run it through these steps; for anything else, keep the baseline and the data questions and test that tool the same way.

1. Time your baseline. For five clinic days, note when your last chart closes and how many callbacks you returned.
2. Add consent first. Check your state's recording rule, then add a line to intake paperwork and a script for recorded callbacks.
3. Trial one scribe on routine visits. CoVet and Scribenote Pro both list 2-week trials. Check every dose, side and recheck date against what happened in the room.
4. Move a real note into your PIMS. Do it on a live record, and time the whole trip, including fixes.
5. Get data answers in writing. Who owns recordings, how long they're kept, whether they train models or reach third parties.
6. Settle who signs. If technicians will start drafts, decide who reviews and signs them.