The veterinary profession is facing a crisis of burnout, with 86% of veterinarians reporting severe stress levels. One of the compounding issues includes a frequently overlooked culprit: spending hours writing medical records. Scribenote, an AI-powered medical scribe for veterinarians, has raised $8.2M in seed funding to tackle this problem head-on. The company’s funding was led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with additional participation from Inovia Capital, the Velocity Fund, and a line-up of angel investors.
Veterinarians have a legal responsibility to document every aspect of their interactions with clients, necessitating accurate and complete medical records. Unfortunately, with various types of appointments every 20 to 30 minutes of the day, documentation can be challenging and pile up quickly. Some veterinarians may see up to 30 patients in one day and there is rarely time to document between visits. This results in veterinarians working overtime during lunch and at the end of the day to type records.
Scribenote was started in December 2019 when CEO Ryan Gallagher noticed his sister Katie, a small animal veterinarian, consistently working late to catch up on medical records. After shadowing her at the clinic, he realized that detailed discussions that occurred during veterinary appointments could potentially be captured in real time to eliminate additional workload. When he noticed other veterinarians at the clinic shared the same problem, Gallagher, a University of Waterloo engineering student at the time, saw an opportunity for automation and promised his sister he would build a solution that would allow her to get home from the clinic on time.
Three years later, Ryan’s promise came true. Co-founded by Dr. Katie Gallagher, Alina Pavel, and Emily Merry, Scribenote records conversations between veterinarians and clients, and uses AI to automatically generate accurate medical records in just minutes. In addition to medical records and dental charts, various forms of client communication are also automated, allowing veterinary professionals to fully focus on patient care and building relationships with clients. By providing complete and detailed records of what was discussed, documentation struggles are reduced for an already overburdened Profession.
The platform’s user-friendly design allows veterinarians to start a note on their phone and add to it later from any device logged into their account. Even with poor internet connectivity, users can create offline recordings and sync them later. Scribenote runs in the background to capture audio while veterinarians focus on their patients. At the end of the day, Scribenote’s desktop widget, playfully dubbed “Draggy-Droppy,” allows users to copy their completed Scribenote records into any Practice Information Management System (PIMS) in just seconds.
Scribenote is serving hundreds of clinics – both independently owned and through enterprise wide deals – across North America. In less than a year, its AI Scribe product has already automated over 1.5 million medical records, saving veterinarians up to two hours per day. This has been achieved with just $250K pre-seed funding. The company’s AI scribe is designed for general practitioners and specialist veterinarians alike, with users ranging from recent graduates to those with 35 years of experience in the field. The impact on veterinarians’ lives has been significant. Customers report finally being able to take lunch breaks, spending more time with family, and focusing more on their patients. Some users have even shared that Scribenote has been invaluable when they were injured or losing mobility in their hands, allowing them to continue their work without physically writing notes.
The veterinary industry has seen significant changes in recent years, driven by an influx of private equity capital and the effects of the pandemic. These shifts have intensified pressure on veterinary professionals to see more patients and generate more revenue.
With this new funding, Scribenote plans to further develop its AI technology and expand its platform. The company aims to create personalized AI scribes for each veterinarian and build an efficient, intelligent platform for editing and finalizing records. Long-term, all four co-founders and their growing team of Scribenauts envision using AI scribing as a foundation to eliminate every unnecessary click and keystroke from a veterinarian’s day.
As Scribenote continues to grow, Gallagher frequently reflects on his last few months caring for his childhood Golden Retriever, Cali, who lived to the ripe old age of 16. She received the best possible care from Katie who was there for her every time she accidentally swallowed a sock or needed a nail trim. Scribenote wants to help a million other pets like Cali get the care they deserve, and give thousands of veterinarians like Katie the ability to deliver that care more efficiently.
On Tuesday, the independent directors of the Board of 23andMe Holding Co. (NASDAQ:ME) sent a letter to Anne Wojcicki, Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder, and Chair of the Board of Directors of 23andMe, providing their resignation, effective immediately.
The board said, “After months of work, we have yet to receive from you a fully financed, fully diligenced, actionable proposal that is in the best interests of the non-affiliated shareholders. We believe the Special Committee and the Board have provided ample time for you to submit such a proposal. That we have not seen any notable progress over the last 5 months leads us to believe no such proposal is forthcoming. The Special Committee is therefore unwilling to consider further extensions…”
On Wednesday, 23andMe Holding Co., a company specializing in biotechnology and personal genomics, disclosed a notification of non-compliance from Nasdaq’s Listing Qualifications Department. The notice, dated September 18, 2024, indicated that 23andMe does not currently meet Nasdaq’s corporate governance requirements due to a shortfall in the number of independent directors on its board and the composition of its key committees.
And:
23andMe must now submit a plan by October 3, 2024, to regain compliance. If Nasdaq accepts this plan, the company may be granted up to 180 days to demonstrate full compliance. However, if the plan is rejected, 23andMe will have the option to appeal before a Nasdaq Hearings Panel.
Seeing as this company has been trying to sort itself out for months, I don’t see a scenario where they get themselves sorted in weeks. Thus I am pretty sure that they are going to get delisted from NASDAQ, and then they are likely going to cease to exist. This shows what happens when you have one catastrophic event, in this case getting pwned, and you can’t recover. Other businesses should see this as a cautionary tale.
Posted in Commentary with tags Twitter on September 22, 2024 by itnerd
Elon Musk has been in a running battle to avoid having to provide evidence to the SEC in relation to Elon purchasing Twitter stock prior to purchasing Twitter. Which the SEC finds to be suspect at best. Elon was supposed to testify on September 10… But:
In a filing today, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said that it intended to seek sanctions against Musk after Musk skipped a court-ordered appearance in a Los Angeles courthouse on September 10. Per the filing, Musk didn’t notify the SEC that he wouldn’t be appearing until just three hours before his testimony was set to begin.
“The Court must make clear that Musk’s gamesmanship and delay tactics must cease,” the filing reads.
Musk instead spent September 10 overseeing the launch of Polaris Dawn, a spacecraft made by his space exploration company, SpaceX, according to the filing.
The SEC’s legal counsel offered to reschedule Musk’s hearing to the following day, September 11. But Musk’s attorney declined, agreeing only to court dates in October.
And this is what the SEC wants in terms of punishment:
The SEC is seeking “meaningful conditional relief” if Musk doesn’t appear in court in October. The agency also signaled that it plans to file a sanctions motion against Musk to recoup its travel costs for the canceled testimony and other relief. (In the filing, the SEC said that it spent “thousands of dollars” to fly three attorneys to Los Angeles for the September 10 hearing.)
Hey Elon! Top tip. Pi$$ing off three letter government agencies is a really bad idea. Sooner or later they are going to get fed up with your antics and punish you. It looks like punishment is coming. Elon may shortly wish that he didn’t play a game of FAAFO with the SES because he’s not going to win against them.
Over the last week, I’ve gotten four calls that seem to have the same pattern:
The client uses the built in Mail app on their iPhone or iPad
The client also gets email from Rogers/Yahoo
After updating to iOS 18/iPadOS 18, they can no longer send or receive email
Now one of these calls is a fluke. But I’ve gotten four so there’s something clearly going on here. This could be a bug in iOS 18/iPadOS 18. But what makes me think that this is a Rogers problem is that if you try to delete the account and re-add it, that doesn’t work. When you get to the section that requires you to enter the Rogers credentials for your email account, which is a redirect to rogersmembercentre.com, nothing ever loads. Thus leaving you stuck. It gets interesting as I’ve been able to get all the affected clients working by using Yahoo Mail from the Apple App Store. So if you’re in this situation, you could try that as it has worked for me so far.
And what doesn’t help the situation is that Rogers and their co branded Rogers/Yahoo email service has been a train wreck next to a dumpster fire for a while now. You can get the details here on that. But what that does is cloud the issue because you can make valid arguments that either Apple or Rogers could be at fault here. Regardless, I’m going to reiterate my official advice for any issues related to Rogers email. Abandon it. Details as to why I feel that way can be found here. But it’s pretty clear that you cannot rely on Rogers to provide their users with reliable email. And that’s independent of who’s at fault when it comes to this specific issue. Thus you need to do what you need to do to get reliable email that works for you.
If I find out any additional details or fixes for this, I’ll be sure to post an update.
If you get an email saying that you’re going to get something for free, it might be a scam. Case in point is this email using the Rogers brand and riding on the coat tails of the iPhone 16:
Let me get one thing out of the way right up front. No Canadian telco is going to give you a phone for free. That affects their bottom line. So it’s not going to happen. EVER. Thus knowing that, this is clearly a scam. And you should delete this. But if that’s not convincing enough, this might be:
The email address that sent this is not coming from “Rogers.com” so this is another sign of it being a scam. So not that you should ever do this, let’s see what these threat actors are up to:
When I tried to click on “Share Your Thoughts”, I got this on Firefox and Opera. This only worked on Google Chrome which shows that the threat actors behind this aren’t too bright as they are limiting the audience of this scam to just Chrome users.
Well, this is another one of those fake surveys to supposedly get an iPhone 16. Okay. Let’s go down the rabbit hole and see where this goes:
Ten fake questions. Oh Joy.
Great. I supposedly now get an iPhone 16. And if you look at some of the specs, they’re wrong as Apple for example doesn’t have a 200MP camera. But you know, facts.
And look at the fake comments here. The threat actors clearly didn’t spend a whole lot of time coming up with these as they seriously don’t sound authentic.
So this is the part of the scam where I assume that the threat actors would collect your personal information and your credit card details so the can commit fraud and identity theft. But the website crashed and went to Google’s home page before I got that far. I don’t know why. The scam targets Rogers customers and maybe because I am on Bell it didn’t like me? I don’t know. But this scam is something that I can see many falling for as humans gravitate towards something that is perceived as free, and let their guard down as a result. Don’t be one of those people and delete this email if it hits your inbox.
Posted in Commentary with tags Twitter on September 21, 2024 by itnerd
You might recall that Elon Musk has been in a bit of a fight with Brazilian authorities over the fact that he won’t ban certain content within the country. That led to Twitter being banned in the country. Now Elon has been pretty defiant about this. And even going as far as antagonizing the Brazilian officials who were behind the Twitter ban. But that might be changing:
After defying court orders in Brazil for three weeks, Mr. Musk’s social network, X, has capitulated. In a court filing on Friday night, the company’s lawyers said that X had complied with orders from Brazil’s Supreme Court in the hopes that the court would lift a block on its site.
The decision was a surprise move by Mr. Musk, who owns and controls X, after he said he had refused to obey what he called illegal orders to censor voices on his social network. Mr. Musk had dismissed local employees and refused to pay fines. The court responded by blocking X across Brazil last month.
Now, X’s lawyers said the company had done exactly what Mr. Musk vowed not to: take down accounts that a Brazilian justice ordered removed because the judge said they threatened Brazil’s democracy. X also complied with the justice’s other demands, including paying fines and naming a new formal representative in the country, the lawyers said.
Brazil’s Supreme Court confirmed X’s moves in a filing on Saturday, but said the company had not filed the proper paperwork. It gave X five days to send further documentation.
Now why would Elon fold up like a cheap suit? The fines that he was dealing with may be hurting him. Or it might be that the fact that Brazilians were signing up for Bluesky and Tumblr in record numbers was something that he could not ignore. But I am going to put this out there. This isn’t over. I think that Elon may comply for a short amount of time. But he’ll go back to playing FAAFO with Brazil. I say that because Elon isn’t an honest broker and I have no reason to believe that he’s being honest now. Thus if I were the Brazilians, I would keep that in mind before considering any lifting of the ban on Twitter.
Remember Tumblr? The blogging site that was once bought for $1 billion by Yahoo, only to be sold to Automatic the owners of WordPress for a mere $3 million? It’s suddenly become very popular in Brazil thanks to the banning of Twitter in the country. Via Tech Crunch:
According to Tumblr, in the days since the X ban in Brazil, the site saw 222.99% growth in communities and 349.55% growth in users. More specifically, Tumblr’s daily active users in Brazil have shot up by 30% from the 110,000 it was seeing, on average, in the days ahead of the ban.
What’s more, the new users aren’t just visiting the site, they’re creating accounts, too, Tumblr claims. The company says blog creation and community joins have also increased. (The company didn’t provide metrics on this front, however.)
Of those users who joined communities, Tumblr found that the percentage of daily active users in Brazil was also five times higher than those in the rest of the world.
While this isn’t the sort of growth that Bluesky is seeing, it’s not insignificant. The thing is that the longer that Twitter isn’t available in Brazil, the more likely people will seek out alternatives. And if people like those alternatives, the more likely that Twitter will never see those users again. Surely Elon has to know that. Or perhaps he’s not smart enough to know that given some of his more recent behaviour. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
One of the things that I teach people to do when I give my seminars on how not to get scammed is to closely look at any email that you get or any website address that you’re asked to visit. We’re going to focus on the latter today by doing an exercise where I am going to show you two web addresses, and you need to determine which one is fake and why:
The correct answer is the second one. That’s because the technical term for a web address is uniform resource locator or URL for short. And understanding how URL’s work can help you to determine what is real and what is fake.
Here’s how a URL constructed:
A URL starts with a protocol followed by the name of the resource that has to be accessed. In this case https which is a web page with SSL encryption during transport from the server to your web browser.
That is then followed by the domain or host name. For example, itnerd.blog is my domain or host name.
If you look closely at the two examples above, they look the same. But they are not. the first one ends in “.rogers.com” after the “mobile-2fa” part of the web address. Which means that this domain name is the one for Canadian telco Rogers. And it’s going to a specific host that Rogers controls named “mobile-2fa”. That’s why there’s a period between the first part of the web address (“mobile-2fa”) and “rogers.com”
For the record, Rogers doesn’t have a host named mobile-2fa. But I am going to use it for reasons that you’ll see in a moment.
The second one has a domain name of “mobile-2fa-rogers.com” which means that that one is going someplace else other than Rogers because the entire text above is the name of a host that has been set up by a threat actor called “mobile-2fa-rogers”. And what that threat actor is hoping for is that by setting up a web address that looks very close to something that Rogers might use, you might click on it because you’re not paying attention to the details. And that in turn will lead you into all sorts of danger.
So why am I pointing this out? I got this sent to me the other day from someone who had this message pop up on his phone via text message:
The person asked me if this was a scam. And based on what I just explained above, it was. Fortunately they didn’t click on anything. And neither should you. But I did as I wanted to see what the scam was.
This is another one of these scams that uses a CAPTCHA to convince you that you’re going to the real Rogers site. But it’s clearly not the real Rogers site as explained earlier.
Once you get past that, you get to a site that has the feel of something that Rogers might create, and you also get this prompt saying that your account requires two step verification. Two step verification is something that adds security to your online accounts because there’s two factors in play. A password and a one time code that is sent to your phone. But this isn’t how Rogers does this. If you want details on how Rogers does this, click here.
You’ll notice that you as a person is not identified in any way. That should be a major red flag as any communication from Rogers will identify you with an account number or your name. Let’s continue shall we?
Now the threat actors want your name and address details. That’s great for swiping your identity.
Using some fake information to get past that, I now hit this page. I am not sure what handing over your credit card info has to do with two factor verification, but swiping your credit card details is also on the list of things to do for these threat actors.
What this example highlights is that you need to closely look at anything and everything that hits your phone, inbox, etc. Because anything and everything could be a scam. and if you’re not paying attention, you could be a victim.
Posted in Commentary with tags Twitter on September 21, 2024 by itnerd
Given that Elon Musk is a bit of a sleazy person, I’m not surprised that I am reading this:
Elon Musk’s X faces steep daily fines in Brazil for allegedly evading a ban on the service there, according to a statement from the country’s supreme court Thursday.
The fines imposed by Brazil’s supreme court amount to $5 million in Brazilian reals, about $920,000, a day. The court said it would continue to impose “joint liability” on Starlink, the satellite internet service owned and operated by SpaceX, Musk’s aerospace venture.
The suspension of X in Brazil was initially ordered by the country’s chief justice, Alexandre de Moraes, at the end of August, with orders upheld by a panel of justices in early September. The court found that under Musk, X had violated Brazilian law, which requires social media companies to employ a legal representative in the country and to remove hate speech and other content deemed harmful to democratic institutions. The court also found that X failed to suspend accounts allegedly engaged in doxxing federal officers.
X recently moved to servers hosted by Cloudflare and appeared to be using dynamic internet protocol addresses that constantly change, enabling many users in Brazil to access the site. In a previous setup, the company had used static and specific IP addresses in Brazil, which were more easily blocked by internet service providers at the order of regulators.
Honestly are we surprised that Elon would do this? Although he, or more accurately his talking heads deny that anything nefarious is going onI:
“When X was shut down in Brazil, our infrastructure to provide service to Latin America was no longer accessible to our team,” a company spokesperson told CNBC on Wednesday. “To continue providing optimal service to our users, we changed network providers. This change resulted in an inadvertent and temporary service restoration to Brazilian users. While we expect the platform to be inaccessible again in Brazil soon, we continue efforts to work with the Brazilian government to return very soon for the people of Brazil.”
This sounds like one of those answers that you give when you get caught doing something you shouldn’t have. And I am a bit surprised that Cloudflare is going along with this as I would not be surprised if the Brazilians go after them for aiding and abetting this high tech game of hide and seek that Elon is playing. Though they too deny that anything nefarious is going on:
However, Cloudflare’s CEO Matthew Prince tells TechCrunch that X going back online in Brazil this week was all a “coincidence.”
“I don’t think anything about this change was intentional to overcome a block in Brazil,” said Prince in an interview with TechCrunch. “This was literally just [X] switching from one IT vendor to another IT vendor.”
Some months ago, Prince said, Cloudflare won a deal to provide X with cloud computing services in several regions across the globe, including Brazil. X had previously used Fastly, a competitor to Cloudflare, and the social media platform is currently in the process of rolling out that switch. Changing providers also changed IP addresses associated with X, which disrupted how Brazilian internet service providers were blocking the X platform.
“We have never talked with [X] about helping them get around the Brazilian dam,” said Prince. “They happened to transition a bunch of their traffic from Fastly over to us, especially in the Latin American region, over the last week.”
Prince describes this as wild coincidence, where his sales team won a deal, and as a result ended up inadvertently “wading into some geopolitical Elon Musk vortex of craziness” months later.
I personally don’t buy this because this to sounds like the sort of answer that you would give when you’ve been caught doing something that you shouldn’t have. At this point I hope the Brazilians really start to twist the screws on Elon as he honestly needs to pay a price for his actions. And a very steep one.
Posted in Products with tags BenQ on September 20, 2024 by itnerd
BenQ makes great monitors. Every time they send me one for review, I tend to walk away impressed. Then the BenQ MOBIUZ EX321UX showed up via FedEx a last week. And I have to say that BenQ came up with a monitor that is almost perfect. Let’s start with the look of the monitor from the front:
This is a plain, black bezeled boring monitor if you look at it from the front. And that is the exact opposite of most gaming monitors that I encounter. The back is white and the monitor comes with a stand that is also white, but has a few orange/copper accents along with being height, swivel and tilt adjustable. I didn’t bother using that stand during my testing and instead mounted it to this monitor arm on my desk as the monitor has a VESA mount on the back. It also is devoid of any RGB lighting. This is a good move on BenQ’s part as they bill this as a gaming monitor, but they clearly designed it to be used in environments other than the basement of some guy who would only use this monitor only to play Call Of Duty Warzone. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
There are two things that I would like to highlight on the back of the monitor. First is the 100×100 mm VESA mount that allows you to mount the monitor on your own stand as I did. The second is the significant amount of ports on this monitor. Here’s a list:
HDMI v2.1 eARC
2 x HDMI v2.1
DisplayPort v2.1
USB-C with 65W Power Delivery, DisplayPort Alt Mode, data transfer
USB-C upstream (USB 3.1 Gen 1, 5 Gbps, data transfer only)
3 x USB-A downstream (USB 3.1 Gen 1, 5 Gbps, power charging 4.5W)
USB-C downstream (USB 3.1 Gen 1, 5 Gbps, power charging 7.5W)
1/8″ headphone jack
That is a healthy selection of ports. But some of you might be noticing that in terms of the ports, the math doesn’t quite add up as you can’t see all of them. That’s because these ports are on the bottom left of the monitor:
This is another good move by BenQ as it makes these ports easy to access should you need them. I would have liked to see all of these USB ports being 10 Gbps ports rather than 5 Gbps ports. But they will work for most use cases. For those who need 10 Gbps or faster speeds, a thunderbolt dock might be your best option.
Pro Tip: I wasn’t getting 5 Gbps a second when I first started testing the ports on this monitor. That was until I noticed this when I was looking through the monitor settings:
Once I set it to USB 3.1 Gen1, I started to get the speeds that I was expecting.
I should note that there are no internal speakers, but the headphone jack has three different sound modes that provide a decent approximation of surround audio. And if you need better sound, you can plug in a soundbar into the eARC HDMI port and get your high quality sound fix that way. As a bonus, there’s KVM support. That means you can hook up a PC and Mac to this monitor for example and use one monitor, keyboard and mouse with both.
Also of note, this monitor comes with a remote control. It provides quick access to picture modes, settings memories, brightness, and the heads-up display with signal and frame rate info. I have to admit though that I took out of the box, fooled around with it to see what it controlled, and put it back into the box. That’s because the joystick at the bottom centre of the monitor does such a good job of allowing you to control the monitor’s features. I should also note that I had to find a CR2032 battery to get the remote up and running as I didn’t find one in the box. Speaking of being in the box, every cable you might need is in the box, along with an external power brick that those who cable manage all the things may not be fond of.
To test this monitor, I set it up with my M1 Pro MacBook Pro running macOS Sonoma version 14.6.1. I ran all my USB gear through the monitor and connected the monitor via USB-C to create a one cable setup that would keep my Mac charged as well as provide access to things like my webcam and the like. That worked fine although my Mac was only getting 65W of power which meant it is theoreticallypossible that if I pushed the MacBook Pro hard enough, the monitor would not be able to supply enough power to the laptop. As a result, the laptop battery would start to deplete until the load on the laptop lessens and the monitor can start charging the laptop battery up again. I wasn’t able to get my laptop to exhibit this in my testing. So I guess that’s a non-issue. But it would have been nice if the monitor put out say 90W so that wouldn’t be an issue with any laptop that has high power demands. Gaming laptops for example.
I ended up running this monitor at 2560×1440 with variable refresh rates of 48-144 Hz enabled. Now that sounds like a weird resolution for me to run a 4K monitor in. But this is why I set it up that way. macOS does something called display scaling. That’s where the monitor actually runs at 4K resolution. But the macOS UI is scaled to something less. And given that I am on the wrong side of 40 years old, 4K resolution on a Mac results in text that is too small for me to read comfortably. So I am using a resolution that balances having a lot of screen real estate with the ability to read text. I should also note that I am using this resolution with the “low resolution” option. That’s something else that is unique to macOS where if you pick a resolution that has this option, you turn off the ability to render everything in macOS’s “retina” mode where everything looks super sharp, and instead it renders everything “normally” for lack of a better description. While there is a difference between the “retina” mode and the “low resolution” option when it comes to text sharpness on the screen, the difference is really slight. Likely because this monitor is sharp and clear when it comes to how text looks on it. Also running in “low resolution” mode covers up a bug in macOS and M1 processors where you can’t run certain resolutions with variable refresh rates and HDR turned on. If you want to go down the rabbit hole on that, you can read the details here.
So with that out of the way, how does this monitor perform? Brilliantly for the most part.
From a basic productivity standpoint, this is a great monitor for productivity work. Text is sharp and clear as I mentioned previously. Though one thing that I noted was that when HDR is turned on, the Eye Care functionality which is handy for those who work for eight hours a day in front of a monitor gets turned off. I’m guessing that BenQ is doing this to preserve the quality of how HDR looks on the screen.
To further find out how good this monitor was, I drove the monitor to a client who is a professional photographer and photo editor so that he could use this tool on it in order to compare his results to the calibration report that was in the box. Yes you read that correctly, there was a calibration report in the box of a gaming monitor. I perhaps should not have been surprised by that as that’s how BenQ rolls. But I still was surprised. In any case, here’s what he told me after testing the monitor for about 45 minutes:
sRGB is spot on as he got an average error of just 1.37dE which from a colour accuracy perspective almost perfect. And this result was actually slightly better than the calibration report stated which was 1.38dE.
Display P3 had average error of 1.41dE. Which again is visibly perfect from a colour perspective.
In short, if you do colour accurate work, this monitor is a great option for you.
Now over to HDR. When you have HDR turned on, you get five HDR modes to choose from:
Honestly, your best option is to use the Display HDR option. I found it to be the mode that mostly matched what my MacBook Pro displays, and I was also assured by my client that this was the most colour accurate HDR mode to run the monitor. One thing that I should point out is that the MacBook Pro has a glossy screen that boosts the contrast of what is on your screen, and the BenQ monitor is a matte screen that dulls the contrast slightly as it’s meant to control reflections. It also means that dark areas on the monitor are slightly more dark than they perhaps should be. Which I am fine with because of the fact that I am in a room where controlling light is problematic. Thus I will take a matte screen any day of the week on any monitor that I use. But I can see where that might be a non-starter for some who want a more vibrant picture. You’ll also note that there are sRBG and Display P3 options for colour accurate work. But you’ll need to disable HDR to use those which is a bit of a bummer. I am thinking that BenQ must have felt that enabling HDR in those modes would take away from the colour accuracy that this monitor has. I should also note that this monitor supports FreeSync Premium Pro so anything from a PS5 to a gaming PC can have smooth visuals with this monitor. And by having it on is how I am getting support for variable refresh rates.
As for the HDR performance, let’s touch on some numbers first. The BenQ monitor has a mini LED panel with 1152 dimming zones. My MacBook Pro for comparison purposes has 2554 dimming zones, and the Apple Pro Display XDR has 576 local dimming zones. The BenQ monitor is capable of doing 1000 nits of brightness at its peak. Again for comparison purposes, my MacBook Pro and the Pro Display XDR can do 1000 nits sustained brightness, and 1600 nits peak brightness for HDR content. The reason why I am pointing all of this out because when it comes to mini LED monitors like this one, the more local dimming zones, the better the HDR performance in theory. While this monitor doesn’t have the same number of dimming zones as the built in display of my MacBook Pro, it has twice as many when compared to the Pro Display XDR. As for the brightness, the 1600 nits of brightness that the Apple monitors are capable of are in “peak” circumstances. Meaning that you mostly won’t see this in your day to day existence. Instead you will see 1000 nits. That makes these monitors somewhat compatible.
After running a number of HDR videos on this monitor, I can say that this BenQ display is outstanding. Fooling around with some games, as well as Blur Busters TestUFO to test the motion clarity, I found that there were no issues that I could find on that front. One big plus is that this is the first monitor that I have encountered where I could control the brightness of the monitor in HDR mode as most monitors outside the Pro Display XDR don’t have such a feature. That’s a very welcome feature and I applaud BenQ for including it. The next thing that I want to point out is blooming. Or rather the lack of it. Blooming is an issue where one local dimming zone will be so bright that it will overwhelm the local dimming zone next to it. For example if you have a really bright local dimming zone and a dark one next to each other, the dark one will look grey rather than black, or you might see what I call a halo effect. I ran a bunch of test videos that I know will generate blooming problems with HDR monitors and didn’t find much if any blooming to speak of. So then I ran some blooming tests which pushed the monitor to its 1000 nits maximum brightness, and I did see that there were some minimal levels of blooming. But it was so minimal that it’s unlikely that anyone would care, assuming that they even noticed at all. I don’t know what magic BenQ put in this monitor to get this result, but I was impressed.
A Few last things that I should mention. BenQ allows you to create profiles and save those so that you can switch between say a colour accurate setup and a gaming setup easily. And for bonus points, you can switch profiles via the joystick controller, or the remote control. You can also use a piece of software called Colour Shuttle to tailor this monitor to specific games if you want to go next level with your gaming experience.
So is this the perfect monitor? Well as I mentioned before, the USB ports could be 10 Gbps rather than 5 Gbps. I also wish you could at least have the option to use HDR in Display P3 and sRGB modes, and I wished that power delivery to a laptop was higher than 65W. But given the performance and capabilities of this monitor, I’m more than willing to let all of that slide. The BenQ MOBIUZ EX321UX is an outstanding monitor that allows you to do anything from Microsoft Word to colour accurate work during business hours, to pwning n00bs in your video game of choice after hours. In fact, I think BenQ is selling this monitor short by calling it a gaming monitor for that reason because it’s a great all around monitor that fits a huge number of use cases. Which is why I will be asking BenQ if I could buy this monitor from them as this is the sort of monitor that I have been waiting for to pair with my MacBook Pro with since I got it in 2021. Expect to pay $1599 CAD for one of these monitors which sounds expensive, but I would argue that it’s money well spent given what this monitor brings to the table.
Scribenote Secures $8.2 Million In Seed Funding
Posted in Commentary with tags Scribenote on September 23, 2024 by itnerdThe veterinary profession is facing a crisis of burnout, with 86% of veterinarians reporting severe stress levels. One of the compounding issues includes a frequently overlooked culprit: spending hours writing medical records. Scribenote, an AI-powered medical scribe for veterinarians, has raised $8.2M in seed funding to tackle this problem head-on. The company’s funding was led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with additional participation from Inovia Capital, the Velocity Fund, and a line-up of angel investors.
Veterinarians have a legal responsibility to document every aspect of their interactions with clients, necessitating accurate and complete medical records. Unfortunately, with various types of appointments every 20 to 30 minutes of the day, documentation can be challenging and pile up quickly. Some veterinarians may see up to 30 patients in one day and there is rarely time to document between visits. This results in veterinarians working overtime during lunch and at the end of the day to type records.
Scribenote was started in December 2019 when CEO Ryan Gallagher noticed his sister Katie, a small animal veterinarian, consistently working late to catch up on medical records. After shadowing her at the clinic, he realized that detailed discussions that occurred during veterinary appointments could potentially be captured in real time to eliminate additional workload. When he noticed other veterinarians at the clinic shared the same problem, Gallagher, a University of Waterloo engineering student at the time, saw an opportunity for automation and promised his sister he would build a solution that would allow her to get home from the clinic on time.
Three years later, Ryan’s promise came true. Co-founded by Dr. Katie Gallagher, Alina Pavel, and Emily Merry, Scribenote records conversations between veterinarians and clients, and uses AI to automatically generate accurate medical records in just minutes. In addition to medical records and dental charts, various forms of client communication are also automated, allowing veterinary professionals to fully focus on patient care and building relationships with clients. By providing complete and detailed records of what was discussed, documentation struggles are reduced for an already overburdened Profession.
The platform’s user-friendly design allows veterinarians to start a note on their phone and add to it later from any device logged into their account. Even with poor internet connectivity, users can create offline recordings and sync them later. Scribenote runs in the background to capture audio while veterinarians focus on their patients. At the end of the day, Scribenote’s desktop widget, playfully dubbed “Draggy-Droppy,” allows users to copy their completed Scribenote records into any Practice Information Management System (PIMS) in just seconds.
Scribenote is serving hundreds of clinics – both independently owned and through enterprise wide deals – across North America. In less than a year, its AI Scribe product has already automated over 1.5 million medical records, saving veterinarians up to two hours per day. This has been achieved with just $250K pre-seed funding. The company’s AI scribe is designed for general practitioners and specialist veterinarians alike, with users ranging from recent graduates to those with 35 years of experience in the field. The impact on veterinarians’ lives has been significant. Customers report finally being able to take lunch breaks, spending more time with family, and focusing more on their patients. Some users have even shared that Scribenote has been invaluable when they were injured or losing mobility in their hands, allowing them to continue their work without physically writing notes.
The veterinary industry has seen significant changes in recent years, driven by an influx of private equity capital and the effects of the pandemic. These shifts have intensified pressure on veterinary professionals to see more patients and generate more revenue.
With this new funding, Scribenote plans to further develop its AI technology and expand its platform. The company aims to create personalized AI scribes for each veterinarian and build an efficient, intelligent platform for editing and finalizing records. Long-term, all four co-founders and their growing team of Scribenauts envision using AI scribing as a foundation to eliminate every unnecessary click and keystroke from a veterinarian’s day.
As Scribenote continues to grow, Gallagher frequently reflects on his last few months caring for his childhood Golden Retriever, Cali, who lived to the ripe old age of 16. She received the best possible care from Katie who was there for her every time she accidentally swallowed a sock or needed a nail trim. Scribenote wants to help a million other pets like Cali get the care they deserve, and give thousands of veterinarians like Katie the ability to deliver that care more efficiently.
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