A new patient arrives. The referral packet is 200 pages. The appointment is in 20 minutes. This is a normal Tuesday in veterinary medicine. And for most teams, the answer has been the same: someone skims and flags pages, and the team makes do with whatever context they can piece together before the exam room door opens.
Veterinary records are rich with useful information. Sometimes too rich. A patient’s history may span months of visits, multiple providers, and years of diagnostics. The details that matter—diagnoses, medications, allergies, abnormalities, trends—are all in there. But finding them fast is a problem.
Instinct EMR‘s new AI features are built for these common situations. From the patient chart, your team can now surface the clinical context they need in seconds without leaving the workflow.
Instinct EMR is a PIMS that combines medical excellence with complete practice management, so you can run your clinic with all-in-one trusted software. Book a free, no-pressure demo today.
Instinct EMR’s Document Summary: Turn Outside Records into Structured Summaries
Outside records are one of the biggest time sinks in veterinary medicine.
In ER and specialty settings, a referral may arrive with hundreds of pages of medical history. In general practice, a new patient may come in with years of records from a previous veterinarian. Before the appointment can happen, the team needs to understand what matters: diagnoses, medications, allergies, prior diagnostics, trends, abnormalities, and key events.
Document Summary helps teams get up to speed faster. From the patient record in Instinct EMR, staff upload and select PDFs to generate a structured summary organized by clinical problem or sorted chronologically. The summary can also be customized to call out specific details.
Every finding links back to the source page in the original document, so clinicians can quickly verify the information or take a closer look without having to manually dig through the PDFs.
For ER and specialty teams, this means faster referral assessment. For GP teams, it means staff can prepare for new patients before the appointment begins.
Read: Too Busy to Switch Veterinary Practice Software? What That Really Means
Check it out: Introducing Instinct’s New Pick the Brain Podcast
Instinct EMR’s Assistant: Patient History, Visit Reviews, & Drug Information In One Panel
Assistant gives your team a faster way to understand patient, visit, and drug information in a panel that can be opened from the patient chart. Teams can get up to speed quickly, without ever navigating to a different tab, with these three core capabilities:
Patient Chart Summarizer: Clinicians can generate a quick patient chart summary that includes recent history, weight trends, and active problems. This can be especially useful when a patient returns after a long gap in care or when a veterinarian needs to walk into the room with a clear sense of what has happened recently.
Visit Summarizer: Teams can review a specific past or current visit. For shift handoffs, case transfers, or busy workflows, this can help the incoming clinician understand what happened, what was addressed, and what may need attention next.
Both summarizers review the patient chart and native chart documents, such as SOAP notes.
Plumb’s Assistant: Drug questions often come up in the middle of care, and a veterinarian may need to check dosages, interactions, or adverse effects, or gather other client-facing drug information. Traditionally, that can mean leaving the workflow. Now, in the same Assistant panel, veterinarians can ask natural-language questions and receive answers sourced from Plumb’s, with citations to the relevant monograph section. Chats are saved, so you can continue to come back to the same conversation and ask follow-up questions, like:
“What medications were given during this visit?”
“Were radiographs taken?”
“When was the last rabies vaccine?”
“What’s the right dosage for cyclosporine?”
Instinct EMR unites medical records and practice management in one modern system. Finally, a PIMS that’s as thoughtful and thorough as the care you provide. Book a demo.
Instinct EMR’s AI Features Are Admin-Controlled & Fully Opt-In
Veterinary clinics can decide for themselves when and how to enable Instinct’s new AI features. AI capabilities are fully opt-in and must be activated by a practice admin. Admins can enable features independently, such as Plumb’s Assistant without Document Summary, or Document Summary without other Assistant capabilities. Once enabled, staff can access the selected features inside Instinct EMR.
Read: Is Your Veterinary PIMS Holding You Back? 5 Common Workarounds We See
Read: Automations in Instinct EMR: Reducing Manual Work & Mental Load Across Your Practice
Frequently Asked Questions about Instinct EMR’s Document Summary & Assistant
What types of documents can Document Summary review?
Document Summary currently supports PDF files. Teams can select one or more PDFs from the patient record or upload prior medical records, then generate a summary from the selected documents.
Other attachment types and Instinct chart documents are planned for a future update.
What can veterinary clinicians do with Assistant?
Assistant helps clinicians get up to speed on a patient or visit without needing to dig through multiple panels and documents. Clinicians can generate a patient chart summary, summarize a specific visit, ask follow-up questions about the patient record, or get quick drug information from Plumb’s.
For example, a clinician can ask about past prescriptions, recent visits, vaccine history, medications given during a visit, or whether radiographs were taken.
What’s the difference between the Patient Summarizer and the Visit Summarizer?
The Patient Summarizer gives you a broad overview of the patient—covering up to three months of history, weight trend, and active problem list. The Visit Summarizer focuses on a single specific visit—what happened, diagnoses, and treatments. Both are accessible from the Assistant panel in the patient chart and review the patient chart and any native chart documents, such as SOAP notes.
How does Plumb’s Assistant work?
Plumb’s Assistant lets clinicians ask plain-language drug questions from inside Instinct EMR. Answers are sourced from Plumb’s Veterinary Drugs and include citations to the relevant monograph section.
Clinicians can ask about drug monographs, dosages, interactions, adverse effects, and related drug guidance without switching to a separate tool or browser tab.
Can I copy or share an AI-generated summary?
Yes. All outputs from Assistant and Document Summary can all be copied or shared—for example, to include in a referral note or discharge summary.
Does Assistant remember past conversations?
Conversation history is preserved across sessions, so you can return to a previous conversation at any time from the Assistant panel.
Are Instinct EMR’s AI features meant to diagnose or recommend treatment?
No. Instinct’s AI-enabled features are designed to surface clinical context and support faster review of information already available in the EMR or in trusted drug resources like Plumb’s. They do not replace clinical judgment. Clinicians remain responsible for reviewing, verifying, and making care decisions.
How can veterinary clinicians verify the information in summaries?
Every summary is generated from the data in your patient’s chart or uploaded documents, and references are provided for each summary so you can click into the source materials. As with any generative AI tool, summaries should be reviewed by the treating veterinarian.
What should I do if a summary looks wrong or incomplete?
First, check the underlying records. If information is missing or inconsistently documented in the chart, it may not appear in the summary. Instinct EMR’s Assistant and Document Summary is an assistant, but AI tools can occasionally produce responses that are incorrect or misleading. Your clinical judgment is the best guide for identifying when something may not be right. If you spot a potential AI error, please use the feedback option in the chat panel to flag it.
Do document summaries update automatically when new PDFs are uploaded?
Document Summary generates a summary based on the documents selected at that time. You can select or unselect documents as needed. If new documents are uploaded, all you have to do is click the Regenerate button in the feature tab.
How are Instinct EMR’s AI tools different from using a general AI tool?
General AI tools do not have access to your EMR’s patient data or records. Assistant and Document Summary are built directly into Instinct EMR and use the patient information already available in the chart. Everything links back to a source, so you can be confident the information is accurate.
Are Assistant and Document Summary optional?
Yes. These features are fully opt-in and must be enabled by a practice admin. Each feature has its own toggle, so practices can decide which capabilities to turn on and when.
Admins can enable features independently, such as turning on Plumb’s Assistant without Document Summary, or enabling Patient Chart Summarizer without other Assistant capabilities.
How does a practice enable AI capabilities in Instinct EMR?
Assistant and Document Summary are the latest AI capabilities available with certain Instinct EMR plans. Existing customers should contact their CSM. If you’re new to Instinct, book a demo with our sales team.
Is practice data secure?
Instinct uses industry-standard encryption protocols to help protect practice data from unauthorized access. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Instinct’s AI providers are not allowed to use practice data to train their own models. To learn more, please read over our General Terms of Use.
Ready to Try Instinct’s EMR’s New AI Features?
Clinical context should not slow down care. Now, Instinct EMR helps bring the full picture into view in seconds. Document Summary and Assistant are only available in some Instinct EMR plans. Current EMR customers should reach out to their CSM to learn how to access these features.
Interested in trying it out? Take a tour of Document Summary and Assistant in this interactive demo.
If you’re new to Instinct and your team is spending too much time hunting through records, handling shift handoffs, or fielding drug questions mid-appointment, these features are built for exactly those moments. Request a demo to see how Instinct EMR surfaces clinical context to get you up to speed fast.
