Why Isn't Every Orthodontist Utilising Their Own Data?

"If we have data, let's look at data" Jim Barksdale former CEO of Netscape

Why be subjective when you can have facts...there is a shift in the world of Orthodontics with digital, AI and data continuing to shape the future of treatment planning, treatment and the patient experience, so how can DentalMonitoring help you to improve the quality of care via the data it collects on your treatments?

Patients that use DM mostly scan their teeth on a weekly basis and the AI is setup in a way to detect a multitude of clinical oral observations. What that means is simple terms is that every week the AI can detect a lot of what is happening in the patient's mouth. This is often information that would not be known about unless the patient was to visit their clinician every week, so it really does remove the blind spots of what happens between in-person visits to a practice. If we are honest, what you see in the patients mouth when they turn up on your chair after 6-12 weeks is either a good or a bad surprise. So we believe that by having upto date information you can reduce the blind spots - this should be good for both you and your patients.

Almost every week I hear from practices that have booked either a 15 minute fixed adjust/wire change and then what rocks up, a patient with 3 broken brackets and then what do you do? Even more problematic and frustrating (for patient and practice) is a 45-60 minute app for a debond yet the patient turns up and they aren't ready, as unbeknown to you part of the brace was compromised 6 weeks earlier. These are inefficiencies that can be avoided with up to date information from scans.

This is looking at the data on a more individual level, how about what it can do for you on a practice level?

Imagine we collect all the data for you across your patient cohort and as a result give you powerful data and insights which importantly allow you to improve the quality of care you provide. We are already seeing examples of practices utilising this to showcase and marker their clinical excellence - for example they can see that their bracket debond rate is much lower than the UK and Global average, what's even more impressive is that they are looking to improve on what are already impressive levels with areas such their patients Oral Hygiene, Aligner tracking, attachment loss and so on.

So we automatically collect the data for you and present it back to you in the form of DM Insights, it is your information and by looking into it you will be able to dive deeper into what is really happening in your practice. Practices without this are mostly going in off feeling, it doesn't have to be this way.

The practice above uses Self-Ligating braces and got some surprising data back when they delved deeper into what was going on. The important part here is that the practice was humble enough to look at this and realise that changes were needed. It is clear to see that there was an issue with the open clip after the braces were being fitted. The data highlighted this and resulted in the team having discussions and training on this to reduce the inefficiency that would clearly be having a knock on effect on the treatment. Raising the standard of care for their patients.

When it comes to braces we do sometimes get some resistance on the benefits of using DM, "we need to see patients anyway". We understand this but the upside in my opinion is 2-fold - there are many efficiencies that you will improve on with using AI here and the impact compounds across all your practice. The other area is the patient experience - it is a completely different experience when patients get weekly touchpoints, can message via the app, see their progress on weekly basis and be kept on track proactively than the alternative (non-monitored). Many practices that monitor braces say there is no turning back when you see what impact it has on the treatment and patient journey.

So when it comes to data - will you be utilising it and leveraging it's power or do you prefer to go on "feel" - curious to know your thoughts?

#dentalmonitoring #ai #orthodontics