How amazing would it be if you had thousands of knowledgeable and trusted mentors to confer with for each patient? That collective knowledge would undoubtedly raise the level of evidence-based care for your patients. Even better, imagine what that could mean for your case acceptance and overall production. OraQ, an AI-based, clinical decision support system gives you this holistic perspective and lets you and your patients discover the best options for both their short and long-term needs.
Dr. Amreesh Khanna, Founder and CEO of OraQ from Calgary explains, “In my clinics, trying to align all the dentists regarding patient evaluations was always difficult. We spent a lot of time on continuing education, mentorship, creating templates, holding in-office meetings, and other things. Meanwhile we were missing potential opportunities for care and practice growth.” That is when the idea of combining information from thousands of other dentists through AI started to become a reality.
OraQ evaluates seven areas of overall patient wellness, including medical risks, sleep-related risks, biomechanical risks (like cracks in teeth, overall wear patterns in the mouth), caries and periodontal risks, occlusion, and aesthetics. The resulting OraQ wellness profile gives the dentist real-time insights and recommendations. Dr. Khanna notes, “We’re not diagnosing. We’re supporting the dentist in presenting treatment recommendations by uncovering all opportunities of care.”
Here’s how OraQ works. Before the first visit, a patient completes an electronic form on the OraQ app that includes personal information, medical/dental history, biometrics, patient preferences, and other customized information. Before the exam begins, the dentist can access and review this information through an intuitive dashboard. After the exam is complete, information including exam findings, imaging and radiography is populated into OraQ software and onto the patient record. Then the magic happens. OraQ’s AI begins tapping into the shared expertise of thousands of dentists to identify precision treatment strategies in real time to ensure no opportunities of care are overlooked. Unlike the AI dental radiographic solutions that only analyze x-rays, OraQ implements AI into the entire clinical exam to create risk and recommendation profiles customized to each patient using the optimal standard of care..
The result is that OraQ enhances the dentist-patient relationship through robust and transparent recommendations, generates additional revenue without disrupting clinical dental office flow, and provides a consolidated source of clinical data for dental insurance payors.
This is especially valuable in multi-dentist and group practices. The dentist and patient can review the overall wellness profile and risk scores together in OraQ’s highly visual, easy-to-understand format and accept the recommendations or not. This builds a feeling of collaboration and trust, leading to improved case acceptance.
At any time, the patient can review their wellness profile and treatment plan within OraQ’s secure patient portal and even share with their other health professionals for an integrative approach. This can lead to a proactive discussion, giving patients more ownership of their overall health and enough information to make an informed decision on treatment.
OraQ eliminates the cookie cutter approach to dentistry. Whether you are in a group, solo, new, or seasoned, you can have the knowledge of thousands of dentists at your fingertips. That’s a proactive way to approach evaluation and treatment for every patient, every day.
OraQ is currently in Beta testing and scheduled to roll out in the next few months. To learn more, visit OraQ.Ai.
About the Author
Lou Shuman is the CEO of Cellerant Consulting Group, dentistry’s leading corporate incubator and accelerator. He is a venturer in-residence at Harvard’s i-Lab, co-founder of LightForce Orthodontics, a member of the Oral Health advisory board and founder of the Cellerant Best of Class Technology Awards. He was selected in 2021 by Global Summits Institute one of the World’s Top 100 Doctors.
