180: Fueling DSO Growth with AI: Strategies for Scalability and Success

Where does AI on the dental side really leverage value? And I think there's two buckets we're going to want to make sure we dig into. One is between the team and the patient, and the other one you hit on that I think most people miss. Hi, I'm Emmett Scott, and just like you, I've had my ups and downs in the dental industry, but times are changing. The DEO has built a map of how to succeed in one of the most challenging industries to navigate. On this show, we talk to dental industry leaders, solve problems, and get you the answers you need to face these challenging times and thrive. Welcome to DEO's Growth Secrets podcast for dental organizations. Now let's get started. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of DEO Grow Secrets. This is going to be a fun one because it's cutting edge and I always love the cutting edge technology. But I've got Adam McDaniel, who's segment manager at Henry Schein one here with us, and Florian, who's founder and CEO of Video Health, the dental AI platform trusted by many DSOs here. And this is a cool partnership. You know, Adam, I remember you and I talking about what Shine One is doing, aggregating these technologies in together. And by the way, can I just say I really appreciate it. I saw a meme the other day, it was like it said, hey, Apple tv, Disney, espn, Amazon prime and Netflix, could you guys just get together and create one platform, please? And I kind of feel like that's what Shine One is taking on. It's like, hey guys, we really appreciate all the innovation, but my team is having to log into 20 different things here. Could you all get together and start working together? And it feels like that's Shine One's. I mean, I don't want to steal your thunder, but isn't that what Shine One's doing?

Yeah, that's, that's exactly right. I mean, that's well said for us. We, we know that there's multiple types of areas of a business that dental organizations need to focus on clinical and front office, back office revenue cycle management. And we believe that the way to handle those things is if they work with each other and are part of a system that you can use organically and that works together. And so yeah, that's really, our aim is to have that one solution where you as a dental organization don't have to go looking into 20 different places for solutions. And so when it comes to AI, I mean, for us, we absolutely love working with Vidia. And it was like the Best of both worlds because you've got Vidya's amazing algorithm and technology behind really computer vision, AI, which is just industry leading. And then you take it and put it in the workflows of where the practice sits every single day. I mean, you walk into, I was in a dental office just a couple weeks ago and the dental team, the dental assistants, the dentist, that's where they want to live. They want to live in the chart, they want to live in the X rays, they want to live right there in their clinical setting and they don't want to hop around to get more information about their patient. And so we take video, we take our clinical experience and we, we mess them together.

Yeah, I would, I would say too something interesting that's changed. You know, we've got now this whole world of pre Covid post Covid, but last five years, what's changed is when we used to talk about technology, everyone was a little bit, well, owners were like, absolutely want to do it. Team members were like, well, is that going to take my job? Is that going to hurt here? It's fascinating to watch how it's changed because now team members are like, so when are we doing the technology to make my life easier? No one's concerned that their job's going to go away because there's like 4 million jobs that aren't getting filled. What everyone is concerned about is my mental health, my exhaustion, how many different tasks I'm having to do, repetitive tasks that I don't want to do, high thinking tasks I don't want to do, whatever it might be. How can you simplify things when you look at turnover rates of employees and dental versus other, we'll say retail industries. One of the challenges we have, frankly is I can go into McDonald's and I'm successful within seven days. Like I've pretty much got things figured out because it's so systemized and so forth. Dental is more complex and this is another place technology can start assisting. So anyway, I'm excited to dig into this because there's just so many things that we're trying to solve within dental right now. And margin, frankly, labor cost is a big one. So having to hire extra people or every time you have to scale and whatnot, or not maximize, you know, I was on with our finance mastermind this morning, just talking through with a member. His margins are just getting squeezed, right? But it's the treatment coordination that's got to go up. It's the, you know, the care. So they're getting the patients in but how they're presenting the care, how they're able to show the decay, et cetera, is a challenge. And we've never fully taken that on because of all the things you said, Adam. We're like, we got to do payroll on Friday, and we got to do this and we got to do that, you know, but now it's time to almost like, okay, we got to buckle this stuff down and really start moving forward.

So, yeah, it's amazing. You know, I. I wrote this down because I wanted to, like, I wanted to make sure I captured it right. I was talking to a dso, and I was talking to one of the regional managers, and they made a comment that using when they're interviewing new grads, they show them the AI solution that they've integrated into their practice. And they said it gives them a leg up when we're hiring. Plus it also gives them a feeling that they can be confident when they go into practice. And they're working with patients and educating patients on their treatment and working with them on treatment plans and acceptance of those treatment plans. So, to your point. Yeah, it's very complex, and there's a lot to make sure you're talking about and reviewing with your patient. This helps call it out for both you and your patient and put kind of a. I call it a standard of care across your organization, whether you have one location or a thousand locations. Now, using an AI tool helps level set for your organization of what your clinical approach is to your patients, to health help not only your staff, but your patients really understand their dentistry.

Okay, I definitely want to hit on that, too. So we've got. We're going to just dive right into this because, you know, where does AI really bring value other than the fact that I can ask, chat, GPT, almost anything. And it gives really cool answers, and it's helped my son write a couple papers that I didn't have to help him with. Like, where does AI on the dental side really leverage value? And I think there's two buckets we're going to want to make sure we dig into. One is between the team and the patient, and the other one you hit on that I think most people miss is that new associate or just associates and standard of care. So I want to talk, but, Florian, I want to give you a second here because, well, I mean, you built the whole software, so you might as well have a little something to say here. But as we're talking, like, what comes to your mind?

No, I mean, I think you're absolutely correct about all the things you've just said. We started Video Health with a mission to help thousands of clinicians across the United States to provide better care to millions of patients through the power of AI. And what we've been seeing is to their first bucket, Emmett is between the clinician and patient. How does it help? Essentially what we have done, vidai, which is then also integrated in dentrix, automatically points out areas which is potential decay or for instance radiographic bone loss. Right. And what we've been seeing is that the dentist or the dentist with the AI is able to much earlier identify treatable decay or bone loss. So it certainly helps together, right? It's not often it's like framed wrong. It's always like AI versus the expert. That's not the case. The expert with the AI together they identify more treatable disease earlier to ensure that the patient gets the right care at the right time and doesn't walk around with delayed treatment. So that's really the core of it. And so to the value of it is on the one side it helps the clinician in a busy day. We have 18 FMX, small images, et cetera, to quickly assess, okay, what are the areas I need to pay attention to to do the right treatment plan. So it helps them to have a.

Can we stay on that one though for a second? Because I think that's easy to be like, oh yeah, that's good. If anyone's ever written a paper, created a PowerPoint, you know, the hardest work is nothing to something. Right? Just going through and putting those first words down on a piece of paper. Right?

Right.

When someone brings you something and says, hey Florian, could you edit this? It's way easy. It's like, this sucks. This is great. Oh, I like how you said this, et cetera. But the, the mental work. Now I know that when you're looking at X ray, it's not a blank sheet of paper, but it is that same element of is that decay? Is that not should I treat this? Should I not? Etc vs someone bringing you something saying here's what I've identified so far. Basically the AI, here's what I've identified so far. What do you agree with and what do you not agree with is so much easier. It's so much easier than a right to. To start with now, okay, great, it's easier. But all day long you add up a little easier and you just end your day differently. Right?

100%. And Emmett, we like, you know, we visit tons of practices. I myself am every week and you know, to Try to call to a dentist who uses our software, and lots of them report. Like, it just makes their life much easier. Not as much cognitive load. Right. Like, again, like an FMX, it's 18 small images, and you don't want to miss anything, so it stresses you out. So what we do is we just, like, prioritize it almost for them. Right. Like, focus them on the right things. So that's. You're right. And actually, I really like the analogy of the presentation. Right. You know, to. To. To make it easy for them. So that's the first step.

Yeah. To be an editor versus a writer. And let's think about if that cognitive load is lifted.

Right.

Okay. Then I'm a little more patient with staff. I'm a little more patient on that. That trace setup, that was wrong, whatever it might be. But my leadership was a little bit

more of communicating than that treatment plan to the patient, rather than rushing through it. Right.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, just think, Think. Think of the demand that's placed on the clinical team. They've got to be good radiologists. They've got to be good clinicians, they've got to be surgeons. They've got to be business. They've got to be our business partners in organizations. You know, they're. They've got a lot. And then they're h. And then they're HR managers, too, you know, and dealing with that stuff and dealing with their. Their. Their team. So I think you. You said that really well that cognitive load is then one more thing to. I've got to convince the patient by looking at this grayscale image that there's something there that they need to pay attention to.

This is.

It's. It's a big change for them to have that assistance and help.

Well, we're. We're assuming that they have, I don't know, 10 years of experience, and this is giving them a lift of like, oh, good, I'm good at this. I know what I'm doing. I just. It's tiring. Right? Like, I can write a new paper every day if I have to write those essays, it's tiring. It's much nicer to have a team of writers that I'm just editing all day long.

Yeah, that's right.

But then you bring in a new associate who's had a lot more time in school to be able to do this, and now it's boom, boom, boom. And I think one of the things that happened as we kind of villainize DSOs for a few years, right. We threw out the baby with the bathwater for sure. We said, hey, dentists need autonomy. They need to be able to decide on their clinical care. 100% agree with that, though. We also threw out any standardization, mentoring support. Right. Clarity. And so I think that's coming back now. I think associates are demanding it even in what they want from DSOs. Number one question asked after, like, compensation is clear. So what's your mentoring program? So what's your training program? So how do you support me? So how do you. You know, basically they're asking, I want a standard of care that I can get behind. And by the way, the best DSOs are working with their clinicians to define that. Why is that? Because if everyone's kind of rowing in the same direction, investment into the trainings, into the equipment can go up, versus if everyone's like, autonomy, anarchy. Well, then where do I make my investments? How do I support this? How do I train staff, et cetera? So I just see this as a piece of that puzzle to. On, like a bigger picture that's. That's starting to play out here.

Yeah.

Emmett, Actually, Florian and I were on a call. Now, this was, this was a number of months ago. We were on a call with the chief dental officer, and he just said. Just what you just said to us. He said, AI is going to be part of our mentoring program. We're going to use that to help our team members understand and improve. And, and listen, we're talking right now about that side of it, but it also is the treatment presentation, too, and not. Not just to prove an actual. The clinical diagnosis and be able to have some assistance with the clinical diagnosis. But Florian pointed out just a few minutes ago, it's being able to highlight and show things to the patient to help with the treatment presentation, to help with the. Help with the way we're discussing treatment options to the patient. Because there's that piece too, right? Not only do they have all those other hats I just talked about, but then they're also, you know, talking to patients about treatment recommendations and treatment planning and presenting and, and being a presenter, you know, as far as that. That side too, that's another hat, I think.

Can I, can I jump in here, guys? Like, I love what you said and what you said, Adam. So, so let me, let me add a little bit to it. So there's the component of the case presentation to the patient, which is that relationship. And then, Emmett, what you said, there's a component of having hired new grads. Right. Et cetera. Or you scale your do practice from two, three offices to five, six offices, et cetera. So the first effect we are seeing to what you just said, Adam, is it's incredibly powerful. And I myself, everyone in our company goes only to dentist who uses our AI, right? And so I myself have just recently, it's three weeks ago now, have been to a dentist who uses our AI. And it's incredibly powerful for the dentist to start core treatment planning with the clinician to be like, oh, what is this red box? What is this bone loss? And then, and then the dentist or the hygienist can use it. Incredibly effective to be like, look, I think that's what treatment plan. And this is not just me, but we confirm it. We have this new technology which has been built on 50 times as much data as a dentist sees an entire lifetime and by 100 dental experts. And it confirms the treatment plan just presented to you. So a lot of dentists, how they use it, they actually hide the AI, then they present the case, and then they pop on the AI to then show to the patient. Oh, that's really the treatment to get. And we do see in our data, right? And Adam, we went over this data that we see a huge increase in case acceptance and overall treatment, treatment revenue.

Now, on the other side, yeah, I get why. Because as a patient, when I look at that X ray and you say, hey, I'm at, you know, this gray area right here that's going to cost you a thousand dollars. But this gray area, that's just Cheetos that you had, you know, whatever those kind of things are you, are you sure? By the way, you have a really nice car. So those kind of things are like running through a patient's head. It just, the reality is.

That's right.

No, it does something about. It reminds me of when Amazon's most powerful tool was when it came up with the five star reviews, right? Because at that point in time, I didn't have to trust Amazon anymore. I just wanted them to have a good price and get it to me quickly. The trust was actually built into the reviews. There's something in technology that it feels agnostic, it feels very Spock oriented, you know, just very logical. And so when it pops up and says, you know, here's what we see, right? And the clinician might even say things like, hey, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it has some decay here, I think we can wait on this one. It's actually pulling back on the treatment plan a little bit. Right? That's fascinating to Me, because I think oftentimes the clinicians even skipping over some of that stuff and not doing a full comprehensive, just not wanting me to get overwhelmed. But if the clinician can almost sit on my side of the table and say, all right, here's what it's saying, here's what I would do today, here's what I do tomorrow, etc, I don't know, it just changes the dynamic emotionally.

Oh, yeah, 100%. The conversation changes with the patient, like you're both saying. I mean, to your point, as I've watched clinicians present how AI shows up on the screen, you know, the. The ones that I see having the best impact in their practice are the ones that do what you just said, Emmett, and that is the AI brought this up, and that could be a problem in the future. Let's watch that. Let's watch that you come back in for your cleaning in six months. We'll see if it's progressed or gotten any worse. But it's the conversation that it creates that really has meaningful differences. And not only if we're taught there's two sides of it. And I think Florian was talking about one piece, which is there is financial ROI to the practice and to the organization there, which is real and we've measured it and we can talk about that. But the other piece is improving patients trust, improving the patient's experience so that the patient feels like the practice is taking care of me. They're using tools to help find out how my health is better. You know, when, when you go into any type of health care visit, if a doctor goes, well, let me just run one more test. Let me just do this one more thing. Let me take a look at it from this angle. You, as a patient feel like they care. They care, and they want to know more. They want more information to help me. And this is, this is the same thing for.

And I cut you off. But, like, this is just good stuff. Good stuff.

No, no, no problem at all. I mean, I really. I mean, I again, like having been a patient myself. Right. It really, it really is. It is data driven. Right. The algorithms have been validated by the fda. That was also very important to us. So there's like tons and tons of studies behind it. Right? It's not fluff and puff yet. We still pay attention that the clinician has the final autonomy, like the always. So they can always. Then, you know, to the final autonomy, but it supports them. That's. That's the only thing. I think I wanted to mention one more thing. You Said earlier that I recently had a great conversation with Dr. Joseon who is I believe actually a do dentist as well. And she, she's amazing. And you know.

And amazing.

I know her. Yeah, she's amazing. A good friend and you know, I know her since she had like two or three practices and now she has several, a dozen. And, and once you start to have a couple of more practices, when you have like two or three practices, you can actually still go every week to every of the practices and you can the shoulder of your new grads and new hires and you can teach them what to do, et cetera. It's still hard, but you could do it with two, three practices. But when you go to like five, six practices, it's incredibly hard to appropriate to teach them and to make sure that you have a standard of care, meaning that all your clinicians are, you know, diagnosing treatment planning, the appropriate care and all your hygienists are not only doing prophylaxis, but they're actually doing period procedures where it's needed, etc. And so I think this is a, it really helps if you have a couple of practices and then up to thousands to as what Adam also said earlier, to introduce kind of a standard of care in a very supportive way. And we really saw that that helps a lot when you hire new people or you want to train them because one of the things, and I don't know if I ever shared this with you Emmett, but before I went into dentistry five years ago, I was actually in radiology and I did AI and breast cancer disease, et cetera. And one of the things you see in radiology is that radiologists become significantly better over time. For dentists that's actually not so easy. And in fact they actually stay, you know, they, because they don't have these feedback mechanisms as much. And so the AI is almost like a feedback mechanism which just helps to train you graduate.

Well, let's talk about the feedback. You know, one of the things that frustrates a lot of chief dental officers bringing in associates is they do way too much wait and see, they do too little of actual treating and they find a way to justify that. I would think that if I have a software that's taken a snapshot of the decay, not just some visual but you got some measurement etc in there. Six months later that patient's coming in, a year later that patient's coming in and I'm getting another snapshot and that decay has expanded. Yeah, that there is a feedback mechanism of like I mean I'm just accelerating. 10 years worth of every dentist learns this over time. Like oh, I should have gotten to that a little earlier. Oh, if they have these lifestyle things that my wait and see is not going to work well on them, you know, whatever it might be, they eventually learn that. But I would think that having trackable data like this, where the AI is almost like flashing at you, like getting worse, getting that I would be accelerating my associates capability to know, hey, with these kind of patients, yeah, it works. And these kind, it doesn't work. Like you need to get on top of this sooner, faster, better. So tell me if I'm accurate on that. I would just think that statistically that would be true.

Yeah, you're, you're absolutely accurate. And, and Florian can talk about this. I, I, a little bit because the video, the way that video works is we do have that, we do capture metrics and do track that information and provide that in a roll up way so that chief dental officers and, and clinical managers and regional regional directors, those, those people that are helping try to do that standard of care like Florian was talking about, they have some of that data. I'm going to talk about something just really you, you hit on where Florian and I get really excited about the future and then I'll let Florian go back, but let me just go forward a little.

Hold on real quick because you just said something. Maybe you're going to hit on this when you roll that data up. I'm thinking of how many chief dental officers want to see unscheduled treatment. The problem with unscheduled treatment is it had to have been scheduled. That is someone had to have diagnosed it. With this I'm able to see comprehensive unscheduled treatment at a totally different level. Correct?

Yeah, you're able, because you're able to see. Go ahead Florian. I'll talk about the future in just a second, but go ahead. I mean you're able to see those things. We've, we, you know, with the like

real dollars sitting on the table.

Hey, we found, we found five detections on that radiograph. We don't have to wait for the practice to actually put that in the treatment plan because we know that that's what the, that's what the AI found.

Yeah, exactly. It's overall really powerful. And I think one thing what you mentioned, Emmett, just, just about the status and Adam, you can go in the future is one of the things. I mean we interviewed a lot of new grads and they do this because they want to Help patients. And so they feel almost bad about like showing them all the different cavities. So they're often just communicate one, one cavity. Let's say they see and only focus on that because they don't want to be quote unquote the bad cop. And I appreciate that, but the problem is that that's often backfires because the next time the patient comes in and then all of a sudden this decay has progressed, the patient's like, so why didn't you show me this earlier? And then they, that that deteriorates the trust. Right. And doesn't build a loyal patient group. And so what the AI does or

heaven forbid that associate leaves, the new associate has a little more integrity. And then all of a sudden the new associ. Here's all this stuff that no one told you about, right?

Yeah, that's right. That's right. And so the nice thing is how, how we change this conversation is that, you know, they show the disease by an FDA approved algorithm which is trained on hundreds of dentists. Fifty times as much data than a dentist he's in their entire lifetime. And then even the new associate can say, all right, look, here is all the different decay we have. Let us now the patient and the dentist work together on what we should treatment plan now and later, etc. And so it changes the complete dynamic and makes them a team again. And so that's, that's a really nice thing. And we, we interviewed a bunch of new grads and that was one of the reasons why in fact it's really interesting, the public believes dentists are sometimes over diagnosing. That is not the case. The problem is they actually under diagnosing and under communicating.

Yeah, let's talk about that. Because when this first came out, there was a huge concerned that insurance companies were going to get a hold of this. And then just. And I think insurance companies were kind of interested and just like beat the heck out of Dennis. You know, it's like here I finally have the data to say you've been over treating. I have not heard insurance companies running in with this. And I think part of the reason is because all they're seeing is oh, dentists are under treating. You know, like we don't want to point out the dentist could actually be billing X amount more every year if they really took care of the patients to the next level. Right, right.

But just think about this. I want to grab into this because I came from healthcare for five years now in dentistry, I love this industry. But just if you look at the high level, we know 49, 50% of adults in the United States have periodontal disease. Right. Okay. So that's a lot of people. Now when you go in the data of dental offices, you see that the treatment rate is somewhere between 10 or 15% of their PAT get actually periodontal treatment. So there's like almost 40% gap. Exactly.

Does that make sense?

Right.

And we do know that, for instance, let's stick to periodontal. We do know that there are a lot of downstream healthcare costs.

Right, right.

Periodontal disease, gum disease has often been shown that there's a two way street to hypertension, diabetes and other diseases. So now, now it's.

I.

Right.

It's actually our honestly ethical obligation to get the right treatment to the patients at the right time. And there's a huge treatment gap. And so that is for instance, I think Adam, we just talked about it. So we launched recently Video Perio Assist also in dental and dentrix as well. And so it shows you the radiographic bone loss with different colors. And if it's over 4 millimeter or 5 millimeter, it is a great visual, not just for the hygienist, but also for the patient to understand. Oh, okay, you know, there's my gum reset, there's gum recession. I need to do something about it. And so I think we can bridge that, that gap if that makes sense.

And by the way, I mean this is some meaningful data. We, since we've launched that inside of Vidya's product, but also with dentrix and dentrix Ascend embedded and integrated. We took some data of what happened prior to that as far as perio treatment in a practice and after using Detect AI it was 26% increase in treatment plans and treatment value for perio related treatment. 26%. And that, that's, I mean that's, that's meaningful on two pieces. Meaningful for patient care but also meaningful for the practices production and, and the return on investment.

The, the. Okay, I'm going to get into like some obstacles here because I think we've done a good job of saying this is a no brainer. Right. I mean if it's going to make your life better as a clinician, make your life better as a chief dental officer, increase your treatment coordination, increase revenue, you know, solve world hunger, whatever. I mean it does everything right. It's amazing pushback that I've gotten. Number one, I'd love to understand there was the insurance piece. I think that's dead. We're fine. There was some FDA Stuff like, can I even use this with the patient? How does that work? You know, there was like lots of confusion on, well, you can't use it until they come back for their recare appointment or whatever recall. Where are we add on that piece? I've got a couple questions on this stuff. So are you able to use this with the patient right on that first appointment? Are you not allowed to? How does that work?

You're absolutely allowed to. I think one thing I just want to say, because this is really important is not all AI is created equal. And the one thing that I would encourage everyone to do is do your research.

When you're looking at AI, what would be three questions? If I had a little worksheet I was going to use, what's three questions I should ask to kind of distinguish AI capabilities?

And this one's a tough one, but this is one I would absolutely ask first. And I would want to understand their FDA and their FDA results of the AI. Now I know that's really technical and I know that that may seem like really difficult question to understand the details, but what you want to understand is did the AI company do the effort to take their different indications, you know, perio and calculus and, and tooth anatomy and those types of things? Did they do the effort to take it through an FDA study? Because number one, that's not cheap. And also the FDA has a lot of oversight about what type of data they want. They want the right sample size, they want the right demographic information. And so, and, and by the way, Florian could speak on this for an hour. But, but that's, I mean, that's one of the reasons why Henry Schein1 partnered with video was because the level of FDA regulatory work that they went through was just amazing and impressive, which really made us comfortable with being able to tell our team and our, our dentist that we work with and the organizations we work with. You can trust this. You can trust that. It's been through a lot of review. It's been through. They continually improve it. And so anyway, that's, that's.

Yeah, because if you're new to this world, you know, and you're used to like buying some patient software that does text messaging or whatever, it's got its own rules, but it doesn't have to go through FDA approval. This is considered a medical product. And so it has a different intensity to it. So.

Well, the weird thing is, Emmett, it. Some pieces of it don't technically have to go through fda. If you look at it through a certain lens and by the way Florian. I, I like the fact that Florian's team doesn't have that lens. It doesn't exist in their business because they're like, no, everything we want to do should go through the fda. That's, that's to do with diagnosis and to do with those.

And patient care. Right. And the patient care because it is, it is important to use it also for that patient communication. Right. And so on. So, so to your question, and I think yes, you know, what is the quality of the AI as Adam mentioned? I think also number two is what is the change management required? Like how is it integrated? Right.

That was going to be actually my number two question.

Exactly. So and then number three is the results. Right?

Yeah, can we talk about that? So we're all a little overwhelmed by the innovation and you know, so it's like, yes, I want to do that, but if I bring one more software in, my team is going to quit, you know, whatever. So I've heard that. Yeah, I'm sure. So one I want to understand is how has this partnership helping with that because it sounds like if someone's on Ascend or Dentrix, that's kind of the no brainer, like this one is going to be more. But I don't want to assume that, you know, if they're open dental or Eaglesoft or something else, they can still have this. But it sounds like your guys's relationships making that change management integration so much easier.

Adam, let me start and then I pass it to you. Okay?

Yeah, yeah.

All right, great.

So this is a great question, right? Like how much change management and so on. And so they are great news in general and that is that essentially everyone is already used to look at radiographs to do diagnostic or treatment planning. Right. So for instance with AI is essentially an eye powered X ray viewer where you see the X ray and the clinicians are used to doing that, et cetera. Right?

Yeah.

And so that's why it doesn't require that much change management. Now nonetheless, going back to what you said on Henry Schein, the best adoption is really if it's right there, right then. And that's why I'll pass to you. That's why we as a leading AI company and then Henry Schein is having this huge footprint and being very innovative. We partner together then to create our joint product. And Adam, I'll let you talk to that.

Yeah, I think for me just simply, I use the word magical because for me it's about making the practices different day easier and easier. Doesn't mean opening up a separate application. It's about putting the tools they need right in front of where they're at every single day. So to your point, change management. There's no change management for Detect AI. You just flip the switch. We, we flip the switch for you. We flip the switch and say you've got it. Now the next X ray you take the radiographic bone loss and the carries show up right on the screen.

Because I mean, in other solutions there's database syncing that has to happen there. I mean there's just, there's just a reality of software integration.

Yeah. And, and again, listen, I know not everyone is on Dentrix or Dentrix Ascend as much as we would hope, but I, I will say that goes back to point number one. So if you are on Dentrix and Dentrix Ascend and you're using, wanting to look at AI, you definitely want to look at the, the FDA piece and also the results of the AI. And you know, Vidya's product is excellent. We powered together that amazing algorithm and then the workflows that you already have in your practice management system and what's a perfect marriage and a perfect workflow for the practice and you know, this is where I was going to say about the future stuff for us that only gets better. All the workflows that you can think of of. Why can't I just click on the X ray and treatment plan? Why can't I just take data from the practice management system to help inform the decisions that I'm making inside of the radiograph? That for us is where we want to completely blur those lines. And we'll continue. We've already done it once and we're, we're continuing to do that through this great partnership that we have that any dentist that's using our solutions together will not have to sacrifice better treatment and better patient care with more time and effort for their practice. Because those two, you shouldn't have to trade off on those two.

Awesome. You're really turning Dentrix and Ditrisa sand into like an app store, fully integrated with everything from AI to bi. Right. And it's just going to be so powerful. We.

Yeah, yeah, we're, we love it. And the customers really feel the difference for them. Which to, to me that's, that's what brings Florian I. Excitement and satisfaction is when we hear those practices are able to get this done easily.

You use the term detect AI. Is that the internal products. Is that what you're calling video health inside of Dentrix Detect?

Yeah, yeah. That's the, that's the name of the. That's the name of the solution.

So if you, if you, if you buy our AI product and you have open dental or Eagle soft or something, it's video AI. And then we put into Dentrix and Dentrix Ascend, we put video AI in and we call it the Dentrix Detect AI. Exactly.

And you get. It sounds like you get a couple other feature functions kind of built in because of that partnership, which is. Is really cool. Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

No, I was just gonna say. Yeah. And the great thing is, is that you don't. You. You get one, which is the, which is the best of both worlds. So.

Yeah, and we're just starting, right?

Like present. Yeah, that's just the present.

Exactly. Because. Because one thing I want to mention with you and you. I think now everyone gets it with ChatGPT, etc. How quickly? Like if you remember 3.5 or. What was it, first 2.5, then 3.5, etc. The great thing is, like, we have amazing engineers and we have a great partnership. And so it's always evolving. It's always evolving. The AI is improving, but also the indications of what we can identify is improving and so on. And so that's the exciting piece to it.

It's not going to get worse. If you've ever seen the picture of Kodak's 1976 digital camera, right? And I heard a comedian the other day, he said, you know the one app I really hate on this phone? The phone app, I never use that. And I hate it when people call me on this thing. And it's true, like the power that is going to exist over time. Okay, let me ask one other question and then we'll get into the future. Another concern, I'm wondering where you're at on this, Florian. I know for us specifically with the pediatric side, just. Is pediatric going to get integrated into this? We've got a lot of DEO members on the pediatric side of the world. Where are you at on that?

So we heard a lot also from executive members at the DO conference. Emmett, a lot of feedback, please. Do. Pediatric and pediatric is really important to us. And as you can imagine, it's a little bit different. It's like also that the parents, for instance, want to ensure that their kids get the right treatment and so on, right? And there's a lot of sensitivity around this. Now, pediatric algorithms are pretty difficult because in a radiograph you can see that you have the teeth over the teeth, right? You have like this Overlap. Right. Of the primary dentition and secondary permanent dentition. And so there is a lot of data required to do this. Highly accurate. And then on top of it, the FDA has completely different requirements for the pediatric population because they have special protections in the United States for good reasons. Right, right. But yeah, let me put it this way. It's, it's in the not too distant future and I feel like we resolved. Kudos to my team, like resolved all these technical challenges and I think, I think the pediatric population and everyone who is listening here will be very happy to have very soon a product for them as well.

When you do, we should have you back on and just talk about that.

I think so too.

Yeah.

Because it's really exactly like, like we should pin that because there's exciting things happening in that domain and we already have a couple of pediatric DSOs, you know, testing it out.

At minimum, when my kids grow up, you know, I want to be able to be like, well, at least I got your dental care done. Well, see this AI, I was using that.

That's right, that's right.

At least the therapy didn't have to be for that. You know, I got everything else wrong but that I got right. So you know, Emmett, this is, this,

this is our vision. Right. Our joint vision is here that also that honestly, in three years, your kids, your partners, your friends that they go to the dentist and they come back to you and say, emmett, so cool. I was just at the dentist and he had this AI diagnostic and that's, that's the vision we work towards. And it's really interesting how last year it would have been like, or two years ago, it was bleeding edge, cutting edge and how quickly it actually right now becomes a standard of care. And you know, I can also say, I think DSOs and dentists who don't use it will at some point be left behind. But I don't think that that's going to happen because as you mentioned earlier, lots of dentists have embraced technology that actually makes their life easier.

Yeah, very much so.

Wouldn't it be great someday if patients just came in and said, hey, I ran a scan, this is what I need you to treat for me. Just sell themselves, you know, anyway. Okay, great. So I mean the ideal right now is if you're treating patients, obviously adults, obviously, if you've got perio care that you want to be providing, like this is a no brainer. And if you happen to be on dentrix and dentrix ascend, like go turn this on. Right? It's like this is.

That's a. No, no brainer. That's right.

You don't even need the spinal cord on that one. Yeah, so it's, that's a good one. Where's the future going, Adam? I know you want to talk about that. Like where, where's this go next? What's your thoughts?

Yeah, I mean, I think for Florian and I, what gets us very excited is you take again what I just said, the best practice management in the world and then you've got the best AI in the world and you leverage those things even more. You know, talking about chat, GPT and other AI tools, the way they get better is through data. So the way the AI gets better is through analyzing more images is what most people think, which is, which is very true. But now apply, just apply images and then add to that your medical conditions, the patient's existing restorations, add to it the doctor's clinical notes and information. Add, add data to just that radiograph and then help the algorithm improve and get better.

And the power, clinician input, clinicians providing treatment, the AI taking pictures of treatment, that was done five years ago, three years ago, on a progressive basis for all of those things at a 50 year old, 55, 60, 65 year old, and start to say for whatever reason, this standard of care is playing out better than this standard of care over here. And to be able to roll that up to a clinician, to dental schools, et cetera, just on pure data.

Exactly. Because now you can say, oh well, patients that have this medical alert or this medical condition have this same indication on their radiograph and there's some correlation there. And so I mean, for us, that's our vision is to bring together that data that you have in your practice management system with that algorithm that's reviewing those X rays and to get better, more insights to your patient and not just more insights on the radiograph. But I mean, Florian and I have a vision of let's do, let's provide insights back into the practice management system of hey, we reviewed your, the data for the patient coming in and the radiographs and here's everything we're seeing, here's everything we're seeing. It's not just about boxes on an X ray anymore. Now that's the future, in my opinion, is to be able to provide more comprehensive insights using data, more than just that radiograph.

This is idealistic, but I'm just going to go way out in the future here. Health insurance companies continue to buy up the dental insurance side if they can bridge the gap between dental care, we have the studies, but we don't have, we don't have the foundational connections we need.

That's right.

But if they can bridge the gap that says taking care of this perio disease reduces cancer in our patients by X amount, which reduces our costs by Z amount. Therefore, we can pay the dentist more for these treatments to encourage them to get them done. Because we're going to save a gazillion dollars over here as soon as that's linked together. And AI is a solution. That's one path that would actually start connecting those. It would also be the insurance companies having an incentive to get ahead of these things, which I think they do. If you look at the, the cost of care at end of life. Right. Anything they could do to increase that or to get ahead of that sooner would be awesome. Yeah, Florian, go ahead.

I mean, let me, let me comment on that. So, because like, so I, I take what Adam said and I, I'm showing a little bit even longer term vision here. Right. So the first we, we call it the three horizons. The first horizon is what, what Adam mentioned of like providing all the comprehensive data to the dentist across all the aspects to provide the best care. Right. And that's, that's what we are working on right now as a partners and that's amazing. The second is can you even use all of the data to not only identify disease but maybe even predict what's going to happen if you don't get the right care? Right. Imagine hey, your periodontal bone loss is here, etc, what happens in a year, what happens in two years if you do not get the care right now. And then the third aspect is what you, what you just said is medical, dental integration. But I come from medical field in Europe and when I was just a slight accent, but when I came to us, I was astonished that people call it healthcare and dentistry because it's a subset. It's not different things. And you know, to put some numbers behind it, in the United States, 4 cents on the dollar is spent on dental care. 96 cents of a dollar is spent on systemic health care. And you know what one of the biggest cost drivers of this is, is besides cancer, it is hypertension and diabetes, the two most chronic diseases which regularly are identified way too late. And so now imagine we can get to a point and I do think that doesn't come from medical, I do think that comes from dental where we can equip dentists all over the United States who have early flags of like, oh, this patient, based on this data set, is in risk of having hypertension. Please go to a healthcare profession. And I think then, Emmett, exactly what you said will happen is that we can reduce with the $0.04, we can expand that maybe to $0.05 and we can reduce the $0.96 significantly. And that's, that's the vision. That's why we called it, by the way, video health and not video dental. We are absolutely focused on dental, but we want to have an overall health impact.

Yeah. It's the raw material. Is there. I mean, dentists are the only physician that sees patients on a proactive. Regular.

Exactly. A regular basis. That's 100% it. You only go to. How often do you get this chest X ray? Hopefully not that much. Right. How do you, how often do you get a dental X ray?

Right, right. Yeah.

Why is it perfectly.

Yeah, yeah. How often have you met with your brain surgeon, cardiologist, even primary care physician isn't calling you every six months saying let's do blood work, etc, Correct.

Right.

The next closest right now is maybe like the hormone therapy doctors, but they don't have the scale that dentistry does. Right. So anyway, dentistry is just from a pure business model. You know, this was, by the way, one of my arguments during COVID was like, we should have been utilizing dentists in some form of fashion as much they had access to more patients than anybody else.

Yeah. They have a local network, a regular network. They have loyal patients. 3,500 or more. 100% agree.

Well, it's fun. It's fun to think about that future. It's fun what you all are doing. If people are like, all right, yes. I mean, I want to talk through this with somebody. What's their next step? What. Who should they reach out to for each of you?

So if they have Dentrix or Dentrix Ascend, give us a call. Just call Henry Shine one. Talk to anybody on our, on our sales team about Detect AI and we can, like you just said, we can flip it on.

Wow.

And allow you to. Allow you to start using it so that you can see the benefits in your practice immediately.

You get some kind of training platform too?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. In fact, you know how easy it is. It's just some video walkthroughs. We don't, we don't want to take more time out of your busy practice. Obviously, with the large organizations, we, we want to sit down and roll it out in the appropriate way with them and get their clinical team and their clinical directors involved. And so we'll absolutely do that. But. But yeah, that's. That's the easiest thing for you to do is just give us a call.

And if they. If they're interested in AI in the future in general. Right. Or have other practice management systems, they can always just reach out to me and I defer it. Which is Florianidea AI.

All right. Spell that out because you have such a great accent.

Fair F L O R I I N my name at Videa V I D E AI.

Awesome. And they can just go to the website as well and. Probably.

Exactly right. Both of our websites.

Yeah, yeah. If you just go to dentrix, ascend or dentrix.com and you just click on features and detect, AI will be listed right there.

Thank you both so much for being on. This is fun stuff. I mean, you're. You're solving core issues here that can help us increase revenue, decrease costs, help with mental load, help with where the future is going. So I sure appreciate it. For those who want to talk about this more, number one, come join deo. You know, it's so painful to be alone out there right now. Why wouldn't you want to be with 250 other organizations talking through some of this stuff? Got an incredible community every day on WhatsApp, etc. Got incredible events. Our next one for our elite members. Those are groups from 10 to 300 million meeting out in New York talking through stuff like this. So come to deo. Otherwise, come over to our Facebook page at DEO Grow Secrets. And until next time, keep smiling. Thank you for listening to deo's Growth Secrets podcast for dental organizations. Continue the conversation on our Facebook group and meet other dental leaders. Get questions answered and the strategies you need to succeed. Plus, we have some free resources for you right there on the Facebook page. Remember, you're not alone. Let's do this together. Join DEO's Growth Secrets Group on Facebook. And until next time, keep smiling.