Why More Practices Are Adopting Veterinary AI
AI-powered veterinary tools aren’t just transforming clinical decision-making. When practices adopt veterinary AI tools that also serve pet owners better, they transform the client experience to encourage more appointments and support optimal pet health—all while saving time to focus more on patient care.
Because of this, more practices are increasingly adopting AI-powered tools.
Veterinary AI Adoption Has Been Rapid
As the AVMA acknowledges, “Veterinary medicine was slow to embrace AI.” Yet all of that has rapidly changed. According to a February 2024 survey of 3,968 veterinary professionals conducted in collaboration with the AAHA:
- 8% of veterinary professionals are now familiar with AI and its applications.
- 2% of veterinary professionals use veterinary AI tools or software.
- 5% of veterinary professionals use AI tools daily or weekly for professional tasks.
Adoption of Veterinary AI Also Involves Veterinary Professionals of All Ages
In its May 2024 article about the first Symposium on Artificial Intelligence in Veterinary Medicine, for example, the AVMA notes how event speaker Sebastian Gabor discovered “veterinarians of all generations, including those approaching retirement, are excited to learn about AI voice-to-text tools that quickly transcribe client conversations and incorporate the information into the patient’s medical record.” Yet interest in veterinary AI extends beyond scribe technology like ScribbleVet.
Practices Are Using Veterinary AI for a Variety of Purposes
“The impact of AI in the realm of veterinary medicine,” write DVMs Aaron Smiley and Jason Szumski in a co-authored May 2024 article for Trends, “transcends the boundaries of documentation, heralding a new era of technological integration that touches upon every facet of veterinary practice,” denoting a variety of veterinary AI tools in practice.
The evidence also bears out in LifeLearn’s 2025 State of Veterinary Marketing Report.
Just under half of surveyed veterinary professionals (47%) said they wanted to know more about adding veterinary AI tools to their practice in 2025, which aligns with AAHA findings that 39% of practices are interested in using veterinary AI tools.
What veterinary AI tools are practices considering?
Roughly half of respondents indicated interest in AI-powered workflow automation to save time creating SOAP notes, discharge instructions, and other clinical information. Yet interest in AI extends beyond this.
In line with top practice marketing goals for 2025 (67% – new client acquisition; 61% – greater client retention), practices are also seeking AI tools to streamline staff workflows, improve and strengthen the client experience, and simplify client education to improve compliance.
This Brings Us to the Focus of This Veterinary AI Article
In a competitive veterinary market, how do practices benefit when they adopt veterinary AI tools that also serve pet owners?
The proprietary pet health education library ClientEd—now with the AI-powered chat Ask Eddie—provides a good example.
Containing over 2,100 DVM-approved pet health handouts, ClientEd can certainly be used through its online portal as a practice-facing resource to educate pet owners, improve compliance, and save time for staff.
- Practices can customize content, brand articles, and add patient-specific notes.
- Handouts can be printed or emailed to clients.
- ClientEd easily integrates into many popular practice management systems and supports front-end staff to help clients with pet health questions.
Though ClientEd was easy to use before, Ask Eddie makes it even easier and faster for staff to find trusted pet health answers. Staff simply use everyday language and ask Eddie for relevant client education information. Ask Eddie also provides staff with client conversation support by effectively phrasing responses to client questions, and helps craft emails, text messages, and even social posts.
However, when practices position ClientEd as a pet owner-facing resource available 24/7 through WebDVM websites, a whole new dimension in pet support, appointments, and competitive advantage opens because (per Veterinary Advantage) pet owners want access to trusted pet health information.
The Reasons Aren’t Mystifying
Pet owners want to be active and empowered participants in optimal pet health. To this end, pet owners want more than 24/7 access to pet health information that supports them post-appointment with how-to information connected to compliance. They want access to resources that support them with any pet health question at any time because they’re no strangers to the internet.
Though pet owners understand the internet can be a good source of pet health information, they also know (perhaps like you) it can be a bad source. They want to steer clear of that with access to resources like ClientEd, and they know they can trust it because your practice is recommending it. Moreover, Ask Eddie makes it easy for pet owners to find that they need. They simply ask questions in everyday language and Ask Eddie returns ClientEd information written in jargon-free language to increase understanding. This not only supports improved compliance. This keeps your practice front and center in the minds of pet owners when they have any questions, which encourages more appointments. Yet ClientEd’s new AI chat offers more in support of all this:
- Ask Eddie notifies your practice when pet owners ask for help on your website, creating opportunities to follow up.
- Eddie helps identify trends in pet health questions that lend themselves to timely, relevant client communications to encourage appointments.
- In emergencies, Eddie prompts pet owners to immediately contact your practice or follow whatever emergency protocols your practice has in place.
There are other examples of how practices and pets benefit when AI serves pet owners. Yet you likely have the overall picture at this point.
In a changing landscape where more practices are adopting veterinary AI to streamline operations and increase revenue, AI tools that serve both practices and pet owners are a big part of the equation.
Practices Certainly Remain Cautious Toward Veterinary AI
Though the AAHA study found 43% of veterinary professionals generally feel more optimistic than skeptical about AI in veterinary medicine, many remain cautious toward veterinary AI, and this is understandable.
For every headline about AI advancements and benefits, veterinary professionals have likely read stories about reliability and accuracy risks when AI tools draw from open online sources of information available through the internet.
Practices naturally can’t afford to take such risks.
This is why practices have confidence in veterinary AI tools like the decision support tool Sofie.
Unlike some AI search systems that pull from open online sources, Sofie supports confident clinical decision-making at the point of need by operating within a closed system.
Providing only evidence-based clinical information that veterinarians rely on daily and have trusted for years, Sofie delivers instant, reliable answers to veterinarians by drawing from a vast, searchable library of trusted veterinary medical resources, including:
- NAVC’s Veterinary Meeting & Expo proceedings
- Today’s Veterinary Practice clinical articles
- 25 industry-leading textbooks
Sofie’s also comes with Vetcalculators—one-click access to precise drug dosage calculators, toxicity calculators, and more—and a chat history so veterinarians can see what questions they’ve asked.
Research Show Confidence in Veterinary AI Correlates with Use
Though caution toward veterinary AI remains, the co-conducted AAHA survey found “a direct correlation between the usage of AI tools in the professional setting and the level of enthusiasm toward this technology.
Said more simply: The more practices try trusted veterinary AI tools, the more they understand why other practices use them, and to empower your decision-making, we’d be happy to show you free demos of two veterinary AI tools covered in this article:
- Sofie, the decision support tool with AI-powered chat for faster, easier access to clinical answers at the point of need
- ClientEd, the industry-leading pet health education library with the AI-powered chat Ask Eddie to help keep more pets healthier and more clients coming through your practice doors
