Press release: Perch publishes an open test set that catches AI scribes inventing drug names

NEW YORK, October 21, 2026: Perch, the veterinary AI scribe built by Talcoe LLC, published an open test set against itself on October 2. The test set is built to catch one specific failure: an AI scribe writing a medication into a chart that nobody said. It includes Perch's own results next to a miss from a commercial veterinary AI scribe.

The test set

The test set holds 70 short clinical dictations: 45 ordinary cases and 25 traps written to bait a false drug name. Together the dictations carry 84 drug mentions. The traps include ordinary words that sound like drug brands, and pets and clients whose names sound like medications. The clips were written by someone with no view of the matching code. Talcoe ran the same 70 clips through Perch and through a commercial veterinary AI scribe.

The audio is synthetic. Each clip is read by one Kokoro text to speech voice. It is not a recording of a real clinician in a real exam room.

What the run found

On the 70 synthetic clips of the original test set, Perch invented zero drug names.

In one clip, the other product in the test charted Roflexacin, a drug that does not exist, next to the Baytril that was actually dictated.

An earlier Perch build had its own miss, on a separate test set. It charted Zycortal, a real but wrong drug, on one of its own trap clips. The build running today declines to chart anything on that clip rather than guess.

The other product also did something Perch did not. Its repair layer recovered atenolol from a badly garbled dictation, on a clip where one of Perch's two speech configurations missed it.

The limit

This is Perch's own test, run by the company that builds Perch. Real speech runs harder than synthetic speech. Talcoe publishes the test set so that any vendor or clinic can run it against its own tool. It is not an accuracy claim about any product.

Where to find it

The clips, the written dictations and the scoring method are posted at github.com/perchvet/perch-trapset. The ledger lists every clip and every miss on both sides, Perch's included. The scoring script prints raw counts, not percentages. A video of the test is posted at youtu.be/-cN9AatJ_yc. A longer account of the run, written by Talcoe's cofounder, is posted at perch.talcoe.com/news/invented-drug-names-test.

"We built this test to check whether an AI scribe can put a drug into a medical record that nobody said, and we ran it on our own product first," said Mohammed Usama, cofounder of Talcoe LLC. "The clips, the written dictations, and the scoring method are all public, so a vet or a reporter can check the finding directly rather than take our word for it."

About Perch

Perch is a veterinary AI scribe built by a two person team at Talcoe LLC in New York. A vet talks through a visit, and Perch drafts the note in SOAP, DAP or BIRP format while the vet is still speaking. If a drug name in the dictation cannot be matched to a known term, Perch leaves it out of the note instead of filling in a best guess. Audio is processed in the cloud and never retained.

Perch runs in the browser at perch.talcoe.com, with nothing to install. It works alongside AVImark. Try it without signing in at perch.talcoe.com/demo. Every clinic starts with 30 days free, with full access and no card.

About Talcoe LLC

Talcoe LLC is a two person company in New York, building software for veterinary practices. Its cofounders are Mohammed Usama and Mustafa Nisar. The company publishes its testing method with its results, so a reader can check a finding.

Press contact

Mohammed Usama, cofounder, Talcoe LLC. Email: mo@talcoe.com.