Dr. John Meis
Hey everybody, welcome to this episode of the Double Your Production Podcast. I'm Dr. John Meis with my partner, Wendy Briggs. Hey Wendy, how you doing? I'm doing absolutely fantastic. This is going to be super fun. So this is the start of a mini series of podcasts talking about AI. I know it's the buzzword. Everybody's talking about AI. Some of it's real, some of it's, some of it's really not that much different than the technology was doing before, but there is some really cool stuff going. And you had a great quote that you shared with me earlier today, Wendy. What was it?
Wendy Briggs
Yeah, it's one of my favorites with AI. Like you said, there's a lot of questions about how AI really fits the dentistry, a lot of fears out there about utilizing AI. And I thought this quote was perfect for really, I guess, a feeder or a lead in to what we're going to be talking about here today. It's from Jensen Huang, and he said, "AI isn't coming to take your job. Someone using AI is coming to take your job, and the first thing everyone should do is to learn to use AI so they can augment their own productivity." So I loved it too, simply because that's the reality of how AI is being used in business and in the world. It's really helping augment the human capital, you know, and helping us as human beings augment our productivity. And in dentistry, we're seeing it happening in a variety of ways.
Dr. John Meis
Yeah, and it's happening super fast. One of the things that I've seen pop up in various places and various marketing things for actually different companies is the, you can fire your front desk now. No way. Absolutely no way. I don't know any practice that is anywhere near that.
It was like that fad back in the, I don't know, was it? 90s, guess, where we'd have a front deskless office. Yeah, well that came, it was a big thing, everybody, but actually nobody was really successful at doing it over a period of time. So we are in a relationship business. And so when I think about some of the goals of AI, reducing headcount, I don't see that.
Wendy Briggs
Right.
Dr. John Meis
But making us more efficient, making us more effective, that's really where the payoff is coming, isn't it?
Wendy Briggs
Absolutely. couldn't agree more. over the years we've done podcasts where we featured technology advancements before. And certainly there's technology advancements that happen in a lot of different areas. And so really we don't get siloed in and focus on just one piece of technology. We talk about the need for practices to invest in technology on a continual basis because there's different technologies that do different things. You know, some technologies are going to impact patient experience and patient service. Some technologies are going to impact, you know, our business strategies technologies are going to impact our profitability in a more powerful way, because as you mentioned, making us more efficient, more effective at our day to day. So, when we look at the opportunity for practices to invest in technology, there's so much out there. It can be hard to cut through the noise and the buzzwords, but AI is actually providing resources to practices that can help them improve in all of those same areas that we've talked about in the past.
Dr. John Meis
Yeah. So the mini series is technology. This first one, we're going to be talking about some elements of AI, and they'll come in later sessions as well. And what's really been fun is to watch how some AI solutions have been designed by what the AI is capable of doing. But some others have been designed about what dentists and their teams actually need.
And so, and one of my favorites is at our Champions of Dentistry Summit this year, we always give two awards for quote unquote the big idea. So one from practices and one from the vendors and suppliers and all the people that support the meeting and show their great stuff. We give an award for the best idea among them.
So do you wanna talk a little bit about the winner this year?
Wendy Briggs
Yeah, it was fascinating. So we had seven companies that we invited to participate in the Big Idea Contest. And as you mentioned, this is a 20-year tradition that we've done. And in the last few years, we've invited partners to come up, and they also compete. And what's awesome about this is they have five to seven minutes. It's TED Talk style. It's not a commercial. But their quest or their mission is to share how their technology or their product or their service is going to change dentistry for the better.
then the audience, all of our clients and members that are there as participants in the summit, they are the ones that vote on the winner. And this year, as we sat up there and we were hearing all this great stuff from these companies, I think four out of the seven had an AI solution of some kind. And it wasn't that they were an AI company, it's just they were sharing how they had learned to use and integrate AI to make their product better. And I kind of look at, dental practices in the same way. That's how we can also use AI. We're not going to change our entire business model. We're not going to replace our team. We're not going to, you know, do anything crazy, but we are able to use, whether it's outside companies or products or software or whatever it may be, or even sometimes just in our human tasks, you know, how can we utilize, utilize AI to augment our own productivity? I found that fascinating. Four out of the seven, we're talking about AI. And in fact, the company that won, literally that's what they are. It's Alta AI. They won because they have brought a really innovative solution to dentistry about that we've needed for decades, you know, to help with voice activated perio probing and some other things that we need chairside to help us augment our productivity.
Dr. John Meis
You know, it's been a problem and there's been, you know, over the years, multiple attempts at trying to solve the problem of how do we record, how do we measure and record efficiently probe depths, gingerbread recession, things like that. Yeah, and accurately. Right. Yeah. And so so there's been multiple, multiple attempts at this and none of them really gained a lot of traction, some better than others, but none of them really gained a lot of attraction, but this is the real deal, isn't it?
Wendy Briggs
It is. And when they showed that video, I loved watching, you I'm up on stage, so I'm watching our attendees react to what this technology can do. And they were, their minds were blown. You know, jaws are dropping, oohs and ahs and oh my gosh, elbowing each other. Yeah. So they deservedly won the trophy. And, know, usually when the audience votes on this stuff, it's pretty close. This year, it really wasn't very close. We had other companies there too talking about AI and how they use it. Some of the software mines the patient record and has data and insights for you about patient health already done for you. Other partners that we've interviewed on the podcast before, MangleVoice has a really new compelling AI feature that's helping save practices time. For years we've said, you've got to listen to your calls, you've got to record your calls, you got to listen to your calls.
Well now, how about we just use AI to summarize the calls and to try and identify if a patient schedules an appointment, awesome, but if they didn't, why didn't they? You know, there's a lot of different tools and features that we can now utilize that help, again, help improve our operations from a system standpoint. And people were really excited about all these tools, but AI ultimately took home the trophy and the bragging rights.
Dr. John Meis
And so one of the things that I think we pride ourselves on is we really only kind of focus on the things that are actually working, that are in offices, that are functioning well. And it may not be the latest, coolest, snazziest thing, but it's a thing that's going to work, that makes sense from a financial standpoint. And certainly, Alta AI voice is one of those. Really cool.
Wendy Briggs
Right. And we have a couple of things that we're looking into as well. We're both a little bit, I guess, in awe and somewhat skeptical. I'll put that in the same sentence about some of these, you know, front desk or business assistants, the outbound scheduling AI callers and the inbound AI callers. I know we're all using some elements of AI, but there's people that are really working hard on developing some of these tools that may really be effective once they're dialed in. I don't think anyone's
100 % dialed in yet, which is why we haven't featured them yet, but we are investigating or watching these things very, very closely. And as a part of this series, we may invite some of these innovators to share where they are with the technology and ultimately what their end goal is. So if that's of interest to any of our listeners here today, you know, stay tuned and we'll be dropping some of these technology mini series podcasts here in the next coming months.
Dr. John Meis
And the amazing thing about AI is that it learns, and as it learns, it learns faster and faster. And so some of these things may be ready for prime time, and we're going to be super excited once we see it in people's offices, see it functioning, seeing it making financial sense. Listen up here. that's and true.
Wendy Briggs
I love that. Dr. John, one other thing I wanted to mention is, you we talk about why the investments in technology and over the years, we've talked about a lot of different reasons. One of our long time members shared with me something that he embraced years ago that's made a difference in his practice. And I thought, you know, we should share that today as well, because sometimes I believe practice owners might be thinking, why should we really bother with technology? I'm too old. I hear a lot about AI. I don't really get it. I don't understand it. don't know. I feel like I'm...
I'm behind the eight ball too much to really even catch up. And I absolutely can empathize with that feeling because I feel that way too with some things. But I can tell you that making a determination and deciding to invest in technology has been life changing for at least one of our clients. Dr. Rob Herron shared with me, he's in such a rural area. And he said early on in his career, he knew that in order to attract or recruit doctors to join him,
He needed to have all the things, you know? And so they do and utilize technology at a very high level. They do, you know, digital scannings, but they do 3D printing. They do all this to your side. And so we're seeing, you know, a shift towards dentists, you know, actually utilizing 3D restorations even. And so I think, you know, when we look at all the buzzwords and what technology is actually using, like you mentioned, we usually only feature things that are actively working in practices today.
But if you're one of those that are thinking, why should I worry about it? Or I don't really care to invest time and energy in that. I want to do things that matter. That's one of the things that can really matter in attracting or recruiting or even eventually the eventual sale of your practice. We've seen all the time practices that are up for sale, but they have no buyers because they're 20 years behind in all the technology. And to make an investment and get it up to standard, it's going to be too much of a headache and too much work for anybody.
Dr. John Meis
Yeah. Yeah, we see practices for sale where bringing the technology up to up to current standards is more than the cost of the practice itself. So it's super important. And I was thinking through, you know, why invest in technology? What are some important whys? And, you know, certainly recruiting dentists and recruiting all team members, right? Because all team members like to work with the newest and the coolest and the latest.
Particularly when it's efficient, when it works well, when the processes and systems are in place in the office to take advantage of new technologies. It's definitely a great recruiting tool. Another thing that we've seen, Wendy, is when someone's getting kind of bored or feeling like their career is kind of stale, dentistry does get repetitive when you do it long enough.
But having a new technology, something new and interesting to do can really reinvigorate a career, can't it?
Wendy Briggs
It absolutely can. We had our first ever advanced perio innovations course just last night and we'll be doing more of them certainly going forward. But that's one of the things that we heard was, you know, it's exciting to have new things to learn and new things to utilize on the hygiene side when it comes to perio. We talked about things like desiccation therapy and guided biofilm therapy. We talked about, the buzzword for for several years now has the oral microbiome. And now we're talking about the oral biome and some of the research that we're learning about how viruses and bacteria working together to cause harm in the body. All of these things are certainly new research, but a lot of it is new technology and solutions that are now readily available because of the understanding of what we know. And at the end of these programs, people are like, oh my gosh, such good information and so fresh and new, that does reinvigorate us. There's a lot of burnout in dentistry and hygiene.
specifically and so we've long said, hey, if you're feeling bored or burned out, you just gotta learn new things and set new challenges in front of yourself and technology can count as one of those, know, something new to master.
Dr. John Meis
Yeah. One, another thing that is a big why on this is we can definitely improve the quality of care. And in my own practices, we have the AI radiograph, you know, system, there's, there's, there's a few of them out now, and, and they're all pretty good. And so being able having it as
a tool to point out, you know, diagnoses that may be made. That's awesome, you know, but most dentists read radiographs relatively good, but having consistency of care so that you're looking at it the same way on Monday as Tuesday, as Thursday afternoon, you know. And so it helps with with consistency, helps with consistency across providers, right? Because we see that often in offices where one doctor is more diagnostically assertive than another.
And if they agree on the standard of the AI, it allows them to to level out their care and their diagnostic assertiveness. And the other thing is it'll point out how well we're doing at data gathering. You know, what information do we have in the patient's record? What information is missing that we need to make sure that we capture today? And it can give you a list of all those.
things early in the day, it's all red early in the day, and as they're completed, it turns green, and so you end up with a list at the end of the day. How well did we really do? And just such a great tool to improve the quality and consistency of care.
Wendy Briggs
Yeah, I think the other thing too that people don't really talk much about is how it can really engender trust in the patient. When we tell them, listen, we use AI software, it runs in conjunction with our current software, it's going to alert and bring our attention to possible problems or challenges that we see in your mouth. And in a way that AI becomes like a second opinion and it backs up our findings. And so we've long said patients need to see what we see.
Dr. John Meis
For sure. Yeah.
Wendy Briggs
I saw a comedian the other day. I'll send it to you because it's worth looking at. But he was talking about how when he was at the dentist last time, the dentist showed him his x-ray and the dentist expected him to know what he was looking at when he looked at the x-ray. He said, they could have been showing me the luggage x-ray from the airport and I would have known. And so I thought it was hilarious. And just so brings home the point of, patients don't know what we're looking at in shades of gray, they can't identify it. The AI helps them see what we see in a way they can see. Watch for the areas of color, right? If you see an area of color, that's a possible cavity or potential problem. And so it allows us to bring the patient into that conversation and develops trust. So again, like you said, patient experience is a big one for us. And this is a really powerful way to help, you know, improve.
Dr. John Meis
Yeah. My teams would say that's the number one power of its use is, you know, really helping the patient, making visual for the patient, everything, doing it in the color way and, and, know, trying to explain bone loss in a radiograph, you know, no way. But when it's visual, it's colored and, and it's right in front of the patient. It's just such a great tool.
Wendy Briggs
Yeah, so we'll be talking about radiograph AI and a bunch of other things. think a lot of practices, I shouldn't say a lot, but I'd say a good amount of practices are using AI in their practice with the radiographs, but they may not be using it to a full extent, like you mentioned. They may not even be aware of some of the features that it can do, and certainly they're improving those things all the time. So when we talk about that part of AI, when we talk about AI that practices are familiar with, we'll be talking about AI that practices are not familiar with yet. We'll probably be talking about things that aren't even ready to be released to market yet, but we see them as exciting and interesting that some things that will add value. So it'll be a really fun, fun mini series for sure.
Dr. John Meis
Yeah, absolutely. All right. So, you know, keep listening because we've got some really great stuff coming and some great, some great AI stuff, some great technology stuff, some great products. There's some things that really are, I think, transformational. And if you had told me that they were coming, one of them right off the top of my head is Curadont. If you told me that that that was possible, if you had told me that five years ago, I would have laughed in your face. But now we're seeing really great results with that. We'll talk about that on a future episode of the Double Your Production Podcast. So thanks everybody for listening.
Wendy Briggs
Thanks everyone.
