Dental AI companies and developers have become more prominent in the industry in the past months, changing the way that dental practices can operate.
One of those companies is Overjet, which launched an AI program for dental schools and educators earlier this month, allowing dental schools to gather experience using AI before joining the workforce.
Overjet's chief dental officer, Teresa Dolan, DDS, recently connected with Becker's to discuss the importance of the new program as well as the potential capabilities of dental AI moving forward.
Note: Responses were lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: How will Overjet for Educators impact the dental field?
Dr. Teresa Dolan: As we think about the products we have in the market, the question is, how can they be used in dental schools? We started some very early collaborations with certain schools just to assess where they were in their understanding and the use of the AI technology. What we learned through that process was that dental faculty are curious and interested, and there's a small proportion that are actually involved and engaged in research or teaching using AI, but it was actually a very small proportion of faculty. So job one was just to use our time and talents at Overjet to educate dental faculty and dental school administrators about the potential for us working together and how this could be an advantage for their programs, and then it grew from there. We're really excited, following this most recent announcement, that we actually have a great group of schools who have agreed to do that, and we're starting to deepen our working relationship with those schools.
Q: What are you hoping that the new program will achieve in these dental schools and with these educators and students?
TD: I think first and foremost, just to elevate our baseline understanding about how AI and technology tools can be used to enhance both education and practice. Second, I think there's a huge opportunity to incorporate the technology into actual patient care. When we think about dental education, there's an important component of clinical practice that is part of the educational process. Just being able to take advantage of the technology to both educate in a clinical teaching environment, but also help provide more efficient, effective patient care is really important from lots of perspectives. And then the third piece is research. There are many ways that we're already starting to collaborate with faculty at various dental schools to do research. One, it helps us learn how we can advance our products to solve important problems, but it also enables the faculty to conduct meaningful research that advances the field.
Q: What do you see as the benefits of dental AI for dentists and dental practices?
TD: There are so many, so I'll just highlight a few. One, just in terms of education and practice, dental X-rays and dental radiography is still a critical component of dental diagnosis, and it's a hard thing to teach. For students, having the computer vision and the colorized clinical findings is a great way to train a student's eye. Each of us in the practice of dentistry are all faced with a busy practice environment with many distractions and time pressure, so I think adopting the technology really allows the clinicians to do their work more effectively. Having that assist is really helpful in ensuring that they're always consistent and accurate and precise in making clinical diagnoses. The third thing I'll add is communication with patients. I think being able to display those images with the colorized findings in a way that helps people see and understand their dental conditions really helps influence their understanding of the condition and their willingness to accept treatment recommendations. There are many benefits from the clinical practice and education side.
Q: What capabilities could AI have in the future?
TD: It's almost like if you can imagine it, you can build it. I think there are a ton of possibilities. The challenge is identifying, say maybe, some of the more common and important challenges that face clinical practice and building solutions for those challenges. Our current product focuses on 2D radiography, which is important and what's most commonly used in clinical practice. There is a lot of data collected as part of the patient exam, for example, and extending the AI approaches to better use those data points along with chart notes to improve efficiencies so that the dentist can spend more time actually working directly and communicating with patients. But there's all kinds of automated automation opportunities on the practice side that can really help in that dimension. If we want to focus more on clinical practice, I think there'll be lots of opportunities to bring in other modes of data that can then better assess someone's overall health and well being, and make more customized, patient centric treatment plans for each individual.