Malaysia
Speak Malay, English, Mandarin, Cantonese or Hokkien. Get one note.
A Malaysian consult routinely carries more than one language, and often more than two. PawfectNotes records it as spoken and writes the record in one language you choose — which is exactly the split Malaysian clinicians already describe as good practice.
Speak what the client understands. File what the record requires.
A number you will not find on this page
We do not publish a percentage of Malaysians who speak Bahasa Malaysia, because no census figure exists to publish. The Population and Housing Census of Malaysia 2020 does not collect language spoken — it collects ethnicity and religion. AnyX% speak Bahasa Malaysia
figure you find quoted online is not census-derived, whatever it is attributed to.
What can be sourced is more useful anyway. Bahasa Melayu is the sole national and official language under Article 152 of the Federal Constitution, while English dominates trade and industry (MyGovernment). Malaysia ranks first in Asia and 24th of 123 territories on the EF English Proficiency Index 2025, with speaking the weakest of its four sub-scores — a ranking drawn from a self-selected test population, so treat it as directional rather than representative.
Code-switching between Malay and English is measured, not anecdotal. In a study of Kuala Lumpur Malay speech, English insertion ran at 8.5% of words for male speakers and 11.75% for female speakers, with English stems taking Malay morphology — -kan, -lah — which is morphological integration rather than simple borrowing.
Source: Husni Abu Bakar, Explorations Vol. 9, 2009.
The clearest description of this product was written by a doctor, about doctors
[Doctors] may, at times, need to explain health information in the language or dialect most clearly understood by the patient or family… Bahasa Malaysia, English, Mandarin, Tamil, or other local languages and dialects.President of the Private Medical Practitioners' Association of Selangor and Kuala Lumpur, May 2026. In the same reporting, the Federal Territories Health Department confirmed that Bahasa Malaysia remains the official language for patient monitoring records. (CodeBlue, 26 May 2026)
Speak whatever the client understands; produce the record in a defensible standard language. That is a clinical body describing the input/output split, in a Malaysian context, with no vendor involved.
This is human medicine, not veterinary
The statement above concerns doctors and patients. We found no study of language use in Malaysian veterinary consults at all. The assumption that a small-animal consult in Petaling Jaya behaves like a GP consult in the same suburb is ours, and it is an assumption.
What is supported, and what is not
Spoken input and written output are separate capabilities and are listed separately. There is no summary number on this page, because a summary number is what lets a vendor imply a language is covered when only half of it is.
| Spoken in the consult | Written note comes back as | Mixed in one recording |
|---|---|---|
| Bahasa Melayu | Bahasa Melayu, or English | Yes |
| English | English, or Bahasa Melayu | Yes |
| Mandarin | Chinese — Simplified or Traditional | Yes |
| Cantonese | Chinese — Simplified or Traditional | Yes |
| Hokkien | Chinese — Simplified or Traditional | Yes |
| Tamil | Not supported | — |
Cantonese and Hokkien are recognised as spoken input and are handled under Chinese. They have no separate written output, and should not have one: they are spoken varieties that share a written standard with Mandarin, so the note comes back in written Chinese either way. Malaysian practices generally want Simplified.
We do not support Tamil. A Tamil page existed on this site until recently and we took it down, because the product did not do what the page implied. Tamil-speaking clients are a real part of Malaysian small-animal practice — the statement quoted above names Tamil explicitly — and if your clinic serves them, that part of your day is not covered by this product.
The dialect question nobody else answers
Chinese in Malaysia is not one spoken language, and where you practise changes which one walks through the door.
Penang
Hokkien concentrates here.
Kuala Lumpur
Cantonese concentrates here.
Younger speakers
Mandarin is rising among younger Chinese Malaysians.
Older speakers
Dialects persist most strongly — often the client an adult child accompanies.
Source: Ong, TEANGA 26. Those are also two of the largest clinic clusters in the MSAVA member directory — 37 listed clinics in Kuala Lumpur and 15 in Penang.
The precise claim is worth stating precisely, because overstating it would invite the correction: you speak Cantonese or Hokkien, and you get written Chinese. We are not claiming to produce written Cantonese, which would be the wrong register for a Malaysian clinical file in any case.
We have not found any competing veterinary scribe that publishes a position on Hokkien at all. That is a gap in their published documentation rather than proof their products cannot do it — the way to settle it is to record the same consult on both and read the two notes.
How the note lines up with MVC Directive 2 of 2015
The record-keeping rule is not in the Veterinary Surgeons Act 1974 (Act 147), which is where most people look for it. It is clause 7 of
Directive 2 of 2015, the Companion Animal Premise and Practice Directive, issued under section 8 of that Act. Clause 7(1) permits records
written or in electronic form
and requires accuracy and prompt retrieval.
| Clause 7(2) requires | Where PawfectNotes puts it |
|---|---|
| Client's information | Captured from the consult and editable before sign-off. |
| Patient details, identification, species, breed, gender, age | Extracted into the note header; patient name is detected automatically. |
| Treatment and assessment records | The Assessment and Plan sections of the SOAP note. |
| Admission details | Captured when discussed in the consult. |
| Vaccination records | Only when vaccination is discussed. PawfectNotes writes what it hears; it holds no vaccination history of its own. |
| Special procedures | Captured in the Objective and Plan sections when discussed. |
| Findings on clinical examination, tests and other diagnostic examinations | The Objective section. |
| Prescription, dispensing and treatments | The Plan section, including medications as dictated. |
| Anaesthetic and sedation protocols and outcomes | Captured when spoken aloud during the procedure; not drawn from a monitoring device. |
| Discharge instructions, including death, autopsy and disposal | Generated as a separate client-facing discharge summary. |
There is no prescribed retention period, and we are not going to invent one
We checked the Veterinary Surgeons Act 1974 and MVC Directives 1 and 2 of 2015. None of them prescribes how long a companion-animal record must be kept. If a vendor quotes you a specific number of years for Malaysia, ask which instrument says so. The rule that does bite is PDPA section 10: destroy personal data once it is no longer needed for the purpose it was collected for.
Who may write the record
Directive 2 does not restrict who writes the record. Section 24 of the Act requires veterinary certificates and documents to be signed by a registered veterinary surgeon, and Directive 1 clauses 5.6.3 to 5.6.4 make the veterinary surgeon responsible for supervising staff and
fully responsible for all procedures performed
. A generated note is a draft under supervision until a registered surgeon reads it and signs it off, which is the only way we would describe it in any jurisdiction.
No Malaysian veterinary position on AI exists
We found no MVC position on artificial intelligence or telemedicine — nothing on mvc.gov.my, dvs.gov.my, msava.org or mavma.org.my. State that as a vacuum, not as permission. An absence of guidance means nobody has told you this is acceptable; it means nobody has told you anything, and the professional responsibility for the record stays exactly where it already was.
Your practice management system is probably regional, not American
PawfectNotes has direct integrations with 19 practice management systems, all of them US, UK, Australian or New Zealand products. We found no Malaysia-specific page, distributor, customer or job advertisement for any of them.
| System | What we know about it |
|---|---|
| Kreloses | Markets itself as built in Asia, for Asia. Around 15 named Malaysian clinics carry testimonials and 50-plus clinic logos appear on its site. Built to LHDN e-Invoice requirements. |
| KumoVet | From Gocloud Technologies (M) Sdn Bhd in Petaling Jaya. Names Malaysian clinics and offers a Bahasa Malaysia interface. Its site states ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification and LHDN e-Invoicing support — vendor claims we have not independently verified. |
| PetotumVET, X-Health, VDMS, PetChart | All exist. We found little or no verifiable clinic penetration for any of them, which is a limit of what we could confirm rather than a judgement on the products. |
PawfectNotes integrates with none of them. Notes are copied into the record, which works with all of them. Local tax compliance — LHDN e-Invoicing in particular — is something both Kreloses and KumoVet build for and we do not touch at all. A scribe does not replace your practice management system and this one does not try to.
How small the profession actually is
Malaysia has roughly 4,080 registered veterinary surgeons, of whom 2,777 hold an active practising certificate and roughly 1,666 work in companion-animal practice. There are about 50 veterinary specialists in the entire country — one per 55 vets, against roughly 1:30 in the UK and Australia.
Source: CodeBlue, 22 July 2026.
We cannot tell you how many clinics there are
The DVS directory was not publicly accessible and we found no official register total. The MSAVA member directory lists about 267 clinics, 47% of them in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur — but that is a membership list, so it is a lower bound on the real number and useful only for showing where clinics cluster. We are not going to turn it into a national clinic count.
Pricing, and the free plan
PawfectNotes is $59 per vet per month billed annually, or $69 per vet per month billed monthly. Billing is in US dollars, so the ringgit amount on your statement depends on the rate your card issuer applies on the day. We would rather print no ringgit figure than one that is quietly months out of date.
The free plan is fifty recorded sessions a month, every month, with no expiry and no card — the same model as the paid plans rather than a degraded one. For a single-vet clinic deciding whether a multilingual consult actually produces a usable note, that is enough to test it on real work rather than on a demo.
Questions Malaysian vets ask first
- Can one recording contain Bahasa Malaysia, English and Mandarin?
- Yes. A single recording can carry all three, including switching mid-sentence, and produces one note. You choose the note language separately from the languages spoken in the room, so a consult held in three languages can produce a record in one.
- Does PawfectNotes understand Cantonese and Hokkien?
- Yes, as spoken input, handled under Chinese. They do not have separate written outputs because they share a written standard with Mandarin, so a consult spoken in Cantonese or Hokkien returns a note in written Chinese — Simplified or Traditional, whichever you set.
- Does PawfectNotes support Tamil?
- No. Tamil is not supported for speech or for notes. A Tamil page existed on this site until recently and we took it down because the product did not do what the page implied. If your clinic serves Tamil-speaking clients, that part of your day is not covered.
- How long must a Malaysian veterinary clinic keep records?
- No period is prescribed. We checked the Veterinary Surgeons Act 1974 and both MVC directives and found no retention period in any of them. Any vendor quoting you a specific number of years for Malaysia should be asked for the citation. The rule that does apply is PDPA section 10 — destroy personal data when it is no longer needed for the purpose it was collected for.
- Does PawfectNotes integrate with Kreloses or KumoVet?
- No. There is no direct integration with either. Notes are copied into the record, which works with both. Our 19 direct integrations are all US, UK, Australian or New Zealand systems.
- Has the Malaysian Veterinary Council issued guidance on AI scribes?
- No. We found no position on AI or telemedicine on mvc.gov.my, dvs.gov.my, msava.org or mavma.org.my. That is an absence of guidance, not permission — it means the professional judgement, and the responsibility for the record, remain entirely yours.