Artificial intelligence can be useful for both dentists and DSOs, but it is not always clear how dental AI is being used across large organizations.
Overjet and Affinity Dental Management have partnered to better understand the benefits and challenges of dental AI. Recently, Affinity introduced Overjet's DSO Analytics, which turns data into actionable items.
AI programs can be helpful when it comes to data insights and improving quality of care, according to Gordon Barfield, DDS, senior clinical manager at Overjet.
"We have, for the first time, the ability to actually take this data and correlate it to clinical conditions," Dr. Barfield told Becker's. "This hasn't been the case in dentistry before, so we now are able to have insights into individual decision making, and to be able to directly relate that to increasing patient care and increasing quality of care."
AI can provide dentists with a wealth of valuable data points, metrics and insights that can help improve quality of care, but before that can happen, the AI programs have to be integrated properly.
Mariz Tanious, DDS, chief dental officer at Affinity Dental Management, which was an early adopter of Overjet's AI, said that there are two major keys to successful implementation.
"Setting expectations is extremely important," Dr. Tanious told Becker's. When we're hiring new doctors, that's really what I talk about, it's a tool that helps us become better practitioners at the end of the day. Calibration and expectations, those are the two that I would say are extremely important."
In the past, AI in dentistry was seen as the future. Today, it is no longer the future as the profession moves more toward data and data-driven decision making, according to both Dr. Barfield and Dr. Tanious.
"I think AI and machine learning is certainly the future, and it's here," Dr. Barfield said. "It's not something that's out in front of us. It is literally where we are right now. I think in coupling that with very clear evidence that the profession is moving in the direction of data driven decision making, as opposed to inference guesswork, gut work, gut feeling, decision making. We are moving as a profession toward making these decisions based on data."
"AI is such a big part of dentistry right now," Dr. Tanious said. "If you're not using AI in some capacity, then you're probably starting to become behind the times."