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CATEGORY AI

A late arrival to healthcare’s AI revolution, dentistry is now leading it

By Dr Kyle Stanley, Chief Clinical Office, Pearl

I f you look back at the short history of arti cial intelligence in health care, you’ll see that it’s blazed its brightest trail in elds where it supports life-saving treatment: oncology, cardiology, pulmonology, and the foundation of it all—radiology. e clinical adoption of AI by radiologists has been swift compared to dentistry. According to the American College of Radiology, about 30% of radiologists now work with AI, and its use in the eld is advancing. Brigham Mass General hospital has developed algorithms that can detect abdominal aortic aneurysms. Harvard researchers have developed AI that detects disease on chest x-rays using natural language descriptions in clinical reports and can do it as accurately as human experts. “Over the next 10-15 years, we’ll see more models become widely available and adopted, with the average radiologists practicing with 20-40 algorithms each, depending on their subspecialties,” predicts Dr Keith Dreyer, the chief data science o cer and vice chairman of radiology at the Mass General Brigham health system. Of course, by then, dentistry will have done the work of bringing AI diagnostics into the mainstream. Dentists may be behind the curve on adoption, but they’re swiftly catching up and bringing it to the frontline of patient care. In time, it’s dentistry that will make AI ubiquitous in healthcare. Here’s why. AI encounters of the everyday kind AI that detects a malignant brain tumor makes headlines. AI that detects on tooth 17, not so much. But according to the CDC, 90% of Americans aged 20 and up have had at least one cavity in their lifetime. (25% have one right now.) ankfully, less than 1% will develop a brain tumor.

What that boils down to is that very few people will encounter AI within the con nes of traditional medicine. Medical doctors don’t refer their patients for x-rays or scans until there is cause for concern. AI is called in to support life-or-death diagnoses. Dental o ces, on the other hand, perform x-rays every day and patients get them taken at annual check-ups. In other words, well-care in dentistry starts with imagery. AI-backed software available to dentists now can help them identify and diagnose pathologies that appear on x-rays. But they are also powerful tools for building patient trust. While patients get dental x-rays taken every year, they aren’t experts at reading them. According to a recent survey of dental patients, 65% said they don’t completely understand what their dentist is pointing out to them on those x-rays. AI bounding boxes provide a focal point for patients struggling to see what their dentist is pointing to. is may be one reason why dentists are so quickly adopting the technology. While we’ve seen exponential growth at Pearl, there’s outside evidence that AI is making fast inroads. A 2022 study of how often arti cial intelligence appears in dental literature showed a 21.6% increase between 2011 and 2021 and an even starker uptick of 34.5% over the last ve years. Entrepreneurial adoption Of course, AI can do much more for dentists and dental o ces than just help read x-rays. ey can help with treatment planning, margin calculations, and back o ce operations. Unlike doctors who work in hospital systems, many dentists own their practice. e signi cance of that is two-fold. First, they have a nancial interest in maximizing treatment and production. Empty schedules mean patients aren’t getting the treatment they need—and that practices aren’t using their hours e ciently. When arti cial intelligence gives the front o ce an edge in identifying urgent and high-need cases that ll out the weekly schedule, practice owners are likely to consider it.

Pearl’s Second Opinion® catches even the hardest to-spot conditions in your patient x-rays.

Secondly, purchasing AI tools within medical systems is subject to lengthy panel reviews, RPF processes, and vendor evaluations. e slowmarch of bureaucracy impedes the adoption of everyday tools by physicians. Meanwhile, dental practice owners need only consult themselves or their partners when deciding if they should try AI-powered software. More and more, they’re choosing to do so. at choice will make dentistry the eld in which AI is most ubiquitous. Want to see how AI can elevate your practice to the next level of oral health care? Pearl’s radiologic AI software Second Opinion® is now available through Gamma Tech. Schedule a personalised demo today. u P: 0437 230 808 E: service@gammatech.com.au W: https://www.gammatech.com.au/pearl second-opinion-dental-ai

Radiologic AI as a visual aid in patient communication can boost case acceptance by up to 40%.

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