AI scribes vs. voice-to-text: What's the difference?
Veterinarians spend a lot of time on documentation. Whether it's recording SOAP notes, following up with owners, or updating client records, accurate documentation is essential for patient care.
Two popular tools for streamlining note-taking are voice-to-text and AI scribes. While both options help with documentation, they operate in very different ways and serve distinct purposes.
What is voice-to-text?
Voice-to-text is a basic technology that captures spoken words and turns them into written text. Voice-to-text was a breakthrough when it first emerged. Instead of manually typing every note, vets could speak their documentation aloud, saving valuable time.
You’ve likely encountered this technology through offerings like Siri or Google Voice, where you speak into your phone, and it transcribes what you say. While voice-to-text can be useful for quickly turning speech into text, it does exactly what it sounds like — it writes down everything you say, word for word. If you want punctuation or specific formatting, you need to say it aloud: “comma,” “period,” or “new paragraph.”
It’s a convenient tool for basic note-taking, which has led some veterinary clinics to adopt it for quickly transcribing notes or logging client interactions.
What is an AI scribe?
AI scribes represent the next generation of documentation tools, designed to interpret and process information in a way that voice-to-text cannot. Powered by artificial intelligence, these systems capture what you say and understand the context of your conversation. Veterinary AI scribes are designed specifically for vet clinics and are built to handle complex, multi-faceted workflows. They do more than convert speech to text — they process and organize the information, generating accurate SOAP notes, client reports, and medical records with minimal oversight.
This means you can have a natural conversation with a pet owner, and the AI scribe will extract and format only the medical details needed for the record. It even translates layman's terms into medical terminology! For example, if "It looks like Fluffy has some goop in his left ear" is said in the appointment, the scribe will document it as "Yellow discharge AS".
Key differences between AI scribes and voice-to-text
When comparing AI scribes to voice-to-text systems, the key differences lie in how these tools integrate with your practice, handle accuracy, and manage complex environments. Understanding these distinctions can help you choose the best solution for your practice, ensuring efficient documentation without sacrificing quality.
Integration with your workflow
One of the biggest differences between AI scribes and voice-to-text is how they fit into a veterinary practice’s workflow. Voice-to-text tools require you to manually navigate through your Patient Information Management System (PIMS), placing your cursor in the right field and dictating text for each section of the medical note. It’s a time-consuming process and leaves plenty of room for error.
AI scribes like HappyDoc, however, integrate directly with PIMS systems while allowing for extensive customization. They automatically place the extracted information into the correct fields in the medical record. There’s no need to manually click through fields or worry about where each piece of information belongs. Vets can adjust templates, set preferences for how certain information is captured, and even create custom fields.
For example, if you prefer to refer to clients as "pet parents" instead of "owners," an AI scribe can be tailored to reflect that in the output. This level of flexibility allows practices to fine-tune their documentation to meet their exact needs, improving both efficiency and accuracy.
Handling complex, multi-speaker environments
You’re often dealing with conversations between multiple people — vets, technicians, and pet owners. Voice-to-text tools struggle with these multi-speaker environments because they transcribe everything as a single, continuous stream of text, regardless of who’s speaking.
AI scribes, on the other hand, can differentiate between speakers. By recognizing who is speaking and distinguishing between voices, the AI captures only the relevant clinical information, discarding any unnecessary conversation. This ensures that the medical record is clear and concise, with each person’s input accurately documented. It eliminates confusion and makes reviewing the notes easier for the entire veterinary team.
Which solution is right for your practice?
For simpler tasks or practices that don’t require much documentation, voice-to-text might still be useful. It’s a basic tool for quickly capturing notes, and for some demands, it might get the job done.
For practices that want to improve efficiency, accuracy, and workflow integration, AI scribes handle complex medical documentation, integrate with practice management systems, and allow for more customization. AI scribes save time and provide a smarter, more effective way to manage the increasing demands of veterinary care.
Transform your practice with HappyDoc
HappyDoc helps you transform your entire approach to patient care. Your clinic's staff will have a personalized AI scribe that listens, takes notes, integrates with your software, and files the data away in the appropriate spot. HappyDoc works alongside you so you can be free to focus on what matters—your patients.
Schedule a demo to find out how your clinic can operate at its full potential, providing the highest level of care to every patient, every time.
