Hello, everybody, and good evening. Welcome to the webinar this this evening. I'm really excited to have you here. My name is Sheela Roth.

I am head of clinical education at Pearl. I have been here about four years. And joining me this evening is our, director of partner growth, Kimberly Quiesen from Pearl, as well as in partnership tonight with our Carestream team. We have the director of clinical software, John Barsotti.

And we were speaking earlier today about how exciting, having Pearl and Carestream together is going to be. So tonight, we really just kinda want you to embrace AI. Think about how this exciting time can help your patients, help help your practice.

Tonight, we're discussing the magic of AI enhanced case presentations to boost your case acceptance.

AI really excited to walk you through how we can take that information that we are seeing as clinicians and turn it around into a really different perspective so that patients would be able to really understand the dentistry, earlier and more often. We know that dental as dental professionals, that patient trust and understanding are really key to acceptance.

Sometimes explaining those images, though, can be quite challenging.

So thank you again for joining me. Did you want to say a little hello for us, John?

Hello, everybody. I'm John Barsotti. I'm with Carestream. I'm the director of clinical software for Carestream.

The goal here for everybody is to educate on some of the opportunities that exist within the market, run AI for cavity and carrier detection AI along with some other area spots. Carestream's very excited to be partnering with Pearl in some of this these things going forward because we see Pearl as a really dynamic company, not just in software, but more so in knowledge. And that's why this webinar was so important to us, was to put somebody together to really express why AI is is so interesting in the marketplace and how we feel AI can impact dentistry.

So very excited to have you all here. And with that, I'll let Sheela take the reins because I don't know this as well as she does.

Well, thank you, and thanks again for being here tonight.

Okay.

So this evening, what we're really going to do is focus on what is AI?

How is it used in dentistry and the world as well as using Pearl's second opinion to enhance diagnostics, but, ultimately, how we're going to talk about that chairside patient education.

So, really, we hear about AI almost every day now. Right? And we we kinda have to think about what is it. Right?

And it's sometimes an interesting perspective because you hear about it in, medicine. You hear about it in dentistry. You hear about it on the news. And if we really think about the definition, it's very simple.

It's a computer system that can solve problems that humans teach it to solve. Right? So we think about, teaching, you know, Siri. If I ask Siri right now a question, she might actually answer because she's right here.

It's very easy to teach those responses. Right? And when we move through AI, we think a lot about the scary side of AI. Right?

What's happening with AI? Where is it going? These robots are taking over the world. And, really, we're focusing on a a more narrow minded type of AI.

So we're not super worried about this generative AI that's gonna come and take over.

Now AI has kind of snuck into our world without us even knowing it. So we think about AI today. We see a form of AI, which is computer vision. Right? And that's in your self driving cars as well as facial recognition. Again, those of you that have that, active on your phones or even when you're walking through an airport. And really what we're gonna talk about today is the computer vision side on that we use here at Pearl, which is the dental radiology.

Natural language processing, those of you that have used chat GPT, digital advertising, coming soon, some sort of adjunctive help to us charting. Right? Imagine walking into an operatory and being able to say, Bob has a toothache. It's been hurting for three days. Tooth sleuth negative. Whatever the case may be, you're gonna be able to have that just annotated for you so you can spend more time with your patients.

And then also predictive analytics. We are, again, experiencing these on a daily basis. We're putting, information into our cars to figure out where are we going. Even though I know how to get to a restaurant, I'm gonna put the navigation on because maybe there's a better way. So we've really already embraced AI, in our world. And if we think about how can AI really focus on giving us some time back, and we're gonna walk through that today.

So when we look at AI in health care, there's a lot of different ways that we're seeing AI. We see it in diagnostics, drug discovery, different types of treatments, and even robots.

And as we move into the business side of AI, there's a lot going into, really just kind of being able to analyze a lot of data, make better decisions.

We've seen customer service calling people back for your practices and even personalized advertising.

I would personally love to have a little, Tesla robot running around and helping me, you know, make dinner or do laundry or something. But tonight, we're gonna talk about AI in dentistry and how is this really changing the way we're practicing.

There's a lot going on in dentistry. We talk about, you know, automated perio charting, enhanced scheduling, insurance verification, staffing and workflow. So there's a lot of ways that our teams have already enhanced their day by using AI to streamline those simple tasks.

So how did Pearl really train a robot not a robot, a computer vision system to read radiographs?

We took a lot of data.

We did a lot of training, and now we have an output. So that's a very simplified way of explaining what Pearl's been doing and and how AI works. But in reality, when we look back at the history of modern dentistry, we think about how far we've come. So training those models has been happening since the fifties. But just recently, we have models that are more performant, more scalable, more affordable. That's why we were we are able to now introduce AI into dentistry.

We remember those days where we used to take regular radiographs. Right?

Dipping them into the fixer developer, hoping nobody opens the door so that you don't have, you know, the entire FMX exposed.

Not that that's ever happened to me. It has. And then we moved into the the air drill. I mean, I can't imagine not using a regular drill, but I remember the first time I practiced as an assistant, and they had the polisher on those ropes.

And we've come very far to digital scanners and aligners, and now we see AI in dentistry. That's really becoming a basic essential utility to our daily workflow. So we walk in, we turn in the we turn on the air, the water, and all of a sudden now we're gonna be thinking, did we turn on the AI? As we move through adopting AI into our workplace, it's going to become something that we we thought in the past.

Wow. Remember looking at black and white images for all of those years. Right?

So when we think about, dental AI, What does that really look like? What does it look like in my workflow, and what does this look like for my patients? Right? So we're we're talking about basic real time patient facing pathology detection that's going to occur the minute you've taken your radiographs, highlighting areas of decay, calculus, bone level measurements, notable margins, and you see these patient friendly colors.

Allowing teams to really be able to have a better engagement with their patients so that they can understand, like I was saying earlier, the dentistry that, the clinicians are recommending.

When we look back at some of our studies, we've seen that when we see the dentist looking at radiographs, humans are not perfect. When we look at Pearl alone looking at radiographs, the AI is not perfect. But our FDA's trials will actually show that when we have Pearl plus a clinician, we're able to detect thirty seven percent more disease earlier as the computer sees shades of gray much earlier than the human eye.

So how we're focusing on using this in our in our dental world now is regular X-ray sensors, regular imaging systems. And within seconds, you can open up second opinion, and you're gonna see that analysis ready. So you can review the images, and you can share them in your hygiene exams or in your new patient appointments as well as on those patients that are coming in from the restorative side.

We do know that we still have, some clinical in inconsistency in dentistry.

There's a lot of studies out there. All three of these will be on our AI.

But the one in the middle is the one I want you to think about. We took almost eighty seven hundred images, and we gave them to three different dentists. And we said we'd like you to circle an area of decay that you see on the radiograph.

Not would you fill this or anything else. It was just do you see pathology present?

And what we found was they agreed with each other about four point three percent of the time.

But what I found was most interesting in this study was that these clinicians came back ninety days later.

They reviewed the same images, and they agreed with themselves seventy percent of the time. So the the moral of the story here is we're not perfect.

AI is not perfect. But like I was saying earlier, we can see that we're better together. And the clinical ins inconsistency is really what's fueling that lack of trust that we still have in our steno space. I'm sure most of you have had an experience where you've actually had a patient come in asking for a second opinion.

I used to have when I was a hygienist, my friends would come in with these big long lists of scaling and root planing and, you know, irrigation and arrestin and lasers. And I would go in and probe, and it would be maybe a four millimeter in a couple spots because they were a little overdue. So I do think that there are extreme inconsistencies in dentistry giving rise to that continuous unfortunate mistrust in the dental space. I think all of us would agree on this call that the quality of dental care begins with that initial accurate AI analysis on your X rays.

And I added AI because that's what we're going to be moving into. We're all reviewing radiographs on a daily basis, but now we're gonna be moving into a place where let's look at that second opinion. Right? The doctor is the first and final decision maker, but it's always nice to have a second opinion.

When we're typing out an email and we see that little red, you know, spell check, it reminds us that let me take a closer look. No. I spelled that right. That's just a different word. Or my name has two e's. There's always a line under it saying I e. But I'm thankful a lot of times because it's the e I I e situation that it's correcting for me.

That is kinda how second opinion works. Doctors are still focusing on X rays.

They take a second set of second opinion perspective very quickly, and they go back and make their diagnosis.

So one of these statistics was really AI surprising.

Sixty four percent of patients say they don't understand the X rays during a consultation with the dentist.

Now I always thought there's a lot of patients that didn't understand it, and I continuously explained areas of incipient lesions or areas that have been more progressed as well as, you know, I used to hold a pencil up to the screen when I was talking about scaling and root planning and telling and where the bone level was and trying to zoom into those calculus pieces.

AI pieces. I'm sure if we took a poll, this story is probably resonating with a lot of, hygienists as well. But what we have found is all of these times that we've been doing this, patients do not understand what we're telling them. And there was a study done by that talked about the number one reason patients don't accept the dentistry.

Is it because of money or fear, which is AI think what we always believe, but it's because they didn't understand it.

And I think that we've all done a really good job, but can we do a better job?

So let's walk through a radiograph review. I love for you guys to play along. Kimberly, maybe if you're here to call out some of these answers in the chat, we are going to think about how quickly we can review radiographs as well as what it's like to review radiographs from home versus what it's like to review radiographs when doctors have, you know, a patient in room three. They just anesthetize. They have an exam in room four.

They gotta pay some bills, answer the phone, send an email. And it's really quite powerful what dentists can do, when they're moving through their day and all the decisions they have to make. But maybe we can make it a little bit easier on you.

So let's take a quick poll here. Those of you that are still around, hopefully, inside of the chat, we'd love to know on the radiograph how many areas of decay do you see.

Alright.

I'm waiting in the chat.

I'd like to see people playing along.

And remember, your all of you doctors out there, you've got patients.

Four zero two three five zero four one three zero zero.

Amazing.

One four three. The big range here. One four three.

That that's really very telling of the statistics we just reviewed earlier. And remember, it's not what I fill this tooth. Really, what we're talking about is do you see pathology on the radiograph?

I have to give a shout out to Kelly who said six with subgingival calculus.

We have an overachiever there.

So we're showing four areas of potential decay.

And notice as we hover over that segmented lesion, you are also seeing additional data points.

You can see twenty eight and twenty nine, very small. Now remember the question was, do you see decay? Not are you going to fill it. Right? Because that's the decision the doctor's gonna make. And I think it's important to think about how fast you reviewed those, but this is appearing instantly. And maybe all you do is simply shut it off, take a look, turn it back on, and you review your grader radiographs much faster.

Okay. What about this fourteen year old child?

No history of decay.

No concerns.

Anybody see any cavities here?

A lot of votes for two.

Okay. Good. Excellent.

Oh, one one for three.

Yeah.

Good. Between two and three.

Perfect. Okay. So we can see these. But what about mom or dad or the caretaker?

Right? This child's fourteen years old. They've never had a cavity, and now they have a cavity in the front teeth, and you get to tell them that they are gonna possibly need to fill these areas. Now fourteen is very young.

Maybe you're not gonna fill them. But when we're explaining it to a patient or in this case, a patient's parent, this tooth part segmentation tool is really where we take the diagnostics to the operatory and really talk about that case presentation.

Right?

What we think about here is we already are thinking about that two surface filling. Are we gonna do it in five years? You might have to have it replaced if you whiten your teeth. We're going on and on and on because that's what clinicians are doing.

But the patient or the patient's mom or dad is thinking, what? There's a cavity. We've been flawless in the front teeth. So we're really able to use these patient friendly colored images to paint the picture, decrease the amount of time we're having to explain the areas of concern to a patient, and now we freed up time to answer questions for the patient.

So we talk about average case acceptance in AI States is less than fifty percent.

Right? And we know how many cavities there are. It would be really ideal if we could increase our case acceptance on the dentistry you are recommending.

It is not Pearl's job to tell you what to fill, and it's also not Pearl's job to recommend additional areas of decay unless we need to point them out. But the whole point is the fact that you have another set of eyes with this extra data and the ability to turn this around and show it to a patient in these color coded images brings your case acceptance to that next level.

Somebody was cheating earlier and figuring out where all the calculus was, but let's do one last quiz here. Right? Okay. Calculus.

So when we as we're going through this image, as hygienists, right, a lot of times or dentists, you're talking about an asymptomatic foreign word that people may have never heard. They're here for a basic cleaning. They've been going to their dentist for the last twenty years. Maybe they're a new patient, or maybe it's a existing patient that was gone for a AI, or you're seeing some areas move into, those larger measurements that we're not fond of seeing.

When we're having to discuss, hopefully, you got six, periodontal concerns, you're now giving the hygienist the tools that they need so that the patients can understand what they're recommending. Right? So it really kind of becomes again, unfortunately, if you take an X-ray and you see calculus after you've done the scaling and root planning AI I have, that's a big bummer.

But isn't that the whole point is to raise the clinical excellence in our own daily workflow and then to make sure that the patients understand what we're recommending.

So I wanna walk you through my best friend's daughter, and she came to my old practice I used to manage. And she said, hey. You guys recommended a bunch of fillings on Kendall, and she just moved from her pediatric dentist. She was in college for a couple years. She came back, and she's never had a cavity. And so do you have a new dentist there that's recommending more treatment, or why do you why do you think she has they told her she has, like, five cavities.

So I pulled up second opinion, and I said, yeah. You have a lot. Have you ever told her to floss? No.

I didn't tell her that. I'm just kidding. She is my best friend. But very alarming.

Now think about how many patients that you look at X rays and you're making that definitive decision. Am I gonna fill it? Am I gonna wait? What's the caries ratio in this patient?

Right? Is this high caries patient? I love that the ADA is really focusing on minimally invasive dentistry, but we also need to think about what are our patients hearing from us. Right?

And you have this nice image showing you that the light pink lesion is in the enamel, and the darker pink has progressed past or into that DEJ.

Again, painting that very basic picture, how are we going to make sure this patient doesn't have this happen again in the next two years? And this doctor decided they were only gonna do one of the fillings at that AI, so they did thirty one distal.

Now we talked earlier about predictive analytics. Imagine a day where you could look at these images and AI could analyze the last one and this one, and it could predict when that disease progression was gonna move past the enamel. Would really allow us to make better and more informed decisions, today.

So lots of pathologies we talk about here caries. The two different colors have really been very informative for teams to evaluate those watch lesions each AI. Also plant the seed with the patient. Right?

You know, Kimberly, these are the areas we're gonna watch today. They're in the light pink region. We wanna make sure you're flossing those. And also the ones that are a little bit darker, we're gonna have to put a filling in there to arrest that decay. Or maybe you're talking about the light pink ones with remineralizing.

The easiest workflow to remember is you've taken the X rays. You turn them off, all of the AI, turn it back on. You decide very quickly, and you move to your treatment plan. If there was some way I could find in my day to decrease time I spend on a regular task, I would do that. And that's also what Pearl is focusing on here is making that radiograph review be so much easier for the dentist and so much more informative to make those decisions.

Calculus bone level measurements, you're gonna see those as well. CEJ to bone crest, completely customizable.

An interesting thing we found when we started having teams tell us this was, Sheela, we've been submitting some of our images in addition to our regular documentation with our claims, right, with those attachments.

And they're seeing a lot less scaling and route planning denials, and that was a big game changer for Pearl. We we were really surprised by that. We actually made a full printout. I'll share that with you in a moment. This is how patients are understanding how they're going to accept the dentistry earlier.

So, again, no change in workflow. Right? We take our regular images with our regular regular imaging system and our standard sit I cannot speak tonight. Standard sensors.

I'm so distracted by how cute this little guy is. So, and we review them. Right? All the things we're already doing in a on a daily basis.

And then where the magic happens is when we take our own image review from night to day, but also our case presentations.

Imagine trying to explain to a patient, those of you that are clinicians here, on number thirty, you may need a root canal, but we're gonna watch the area of decay over here on this small lesion on twenty eight distal. And on the tooth on top of that big one that's concerning you, there's another small cavity there. And you see these little spurs of calculus. Right?

So for us as clinicians, we're reviewing radiographs faster.

There's a lot of times I remember when I was managing a practice where a patient would come in for a limited exam or a toothache or something. We take a Panarex, and we have just as much going on the other side. Or we take a couple bitewings and we see, wow. We've got a toothache today, but we've got three or four coming down the road. So it's nice to have the AI act as that reminder.

Take a closer look over here. I know the patient came in for number thirty, but what's going on with number three? And where are we at periodontally? Right?

So where we're focusing this evening is on engaging the patient, being able to make sure that they no longer have to look at black and white images. Right?

So we talked about the very best tool is using this AI for the patient. The entire purpose tonight was, okay, how is AI going to help us enhance case presentation?

Well, it's going to just colorize things to make that presentation so much more patient friendly. And if we can decrease that sixty four percent of patients that don't understand X rays or their consultations because we're using X rays, then we've done our job. Right? We all went into dentistry to make an impact and take the very best care of our patients. And now we're we're gonna have a tool that allows us to really do that.

So you have these printouts as well, patient friendly printouts, and we're able to think about how how do we use this as a full team tool.

So dentists are using this every day to infuse trust with the patients, whether it's a new patient, or an existing patient. Right? I remember as a hygienist, there were so many patients that when they came into the practice, we talked about, you know, in the morning huddle, Sheela, you have seven patients today. Three of them have unscheduled dentistry. And I look back in my notes, and I'm thinking, I told them they had cavities. And I told them, you know, they needed fillings before they got bigger. But, really, is it a matter of them understanding or trusting?

They'll never tell us, but there's a lot of data here showing that if we can use a more transparent form of explaining dentistry to a patient, then the case acceptance was definitely going to increase.

Now what about that hygiene doctor handoff? Right? Like I was saying earlier, this is not a tool that just lives in the doctor's office, and he or she will review it right before they go into an exam.

This is a full team interactive tool where, again, no workflow change. You're just opening up second opinion, take a quick look, and you have all of these these features at your fingertips.

Hygienists spend a lot of time preparing for that ideal exam.

In my last practice, we saw over two thousand hygiene patients per month, and we had seven doctors. It was a single owner practice. I'm sorry. Two doctors own the practice.

But what we found was we really had to make sure that the doctors and the hygienists were on the same page.

And what that meant was we empowered the hygienist to also really be that co diagnoser. Right? What needs to be done? Why does it need to be done? And where is the patient at were the three things we wanted to make sure that the doctor was given that information of when they walked in the room. So, you know, we can see here, doctor Bob came in today, and we see that number AI, has an area of concern, a very large concern.

That that crown just fell off last month, and, we wanted to talk to you about that. Also, we're gonna do some scaling and route planning. There's some areas of calculus. So and now the the doctor is well informed, and the hygienist has spent a lot of time with that patient. Right? We we get to spend, I don't know, maybe sometimes twenty five or thirty five minutes with the patient. So empowering the hygiene team to have these images up and running is a great way for you for you as a team to be able to incorporate this in your daily workflow.

Hopefully, by now, you're seeing how this is painting the picture of, AI, we just turn on a different screen, and now we have images for the patient. I can also look at all these images as a clinician before I walk into that room.

Dental assistants are always what I call the glue behind the practice, holding everything together. Right? And, I remember when I was a dental assistant, I was just thinking, wow.

There is so much going on here. I need, like, ten more of me to run around this office and and make this happen. And the interesting part about dental assistants too is as the doctor walks out of the room after they've made these recommendations in the restorative operatories, the patients always turn to the assistant and say, what?

Do I need to do that? Right? Would you do that if it was your tooth? Or what exactly do I need to have done now? Right?

When I was working with associates and we talked a lot about exams, it was interesting to see the very last half of that case presentation.

New clinicians would talk a lot about, okay, Bob. So you have, you know, a two surface filling we need to do on the right side and a crown on the lower right side, and we probably need to do some crown lengthening. And they'd walk out. And at that time, I was a treatment coordinator, and I said, okay. So do you see up here? We have a couple cavities.

And down here, we're gonna be doing a little bit of surgery to make sure we can put a crown on that tooth. Very simple. You know, go through the whole spiel. And this is just because we needed to help the dentist, the the younger ones at the time, explain things in a patient friendly way. Right? So those dental assistants and those treatment coordinators that are out there were key to really helping the patient understand what they needed when the sometimes patients are fearful of asking the doctor to explain things again.

So the admin teams, again, when you're presenting dentistry, a lot of times, you know, the admin teams are just doctor runs up or the AI run. We need four quads and three fillings, and they're coming up. Right? And it's like, oh my goodness. So there's so much to do for that front office team member to be successful as well. Now we've given them an additional tool. So when we're presenting that two SURF comp strange piece of paper that we give all of our patients, on their way out when they don't schedule the dentistry, we now have a visual aid that we can use when we're presenting dentistry.

Right? So we've we've really kind of adopted this way where we show that X-ray on paper one more time. We just print it out, and we say, okay. Poor Kimberly.

I'm beating her up today. I know she doesn't have any cavities. But, Kimberly, you have some cavities we talked about. You can see this big one on that lower right molar tooth.

The doctor wants to start there before that decay goes into the nerve of the tooth. So we're gonna start there and bring you back for some cleanings after we get through getting new crown on that tooth. Do you have any questions?

Excellent. After we looked at your insurance, it's gonna be, you know, eight hundred dollars.

However they're doing that is existing workflow is already occurring every single day. But it might just be that that last visual aid allows that patient to really ask those questions, understand the treatment a little bit more, and be able to move into accepting it. Now are we expecting every patient to review radiographs and understand them and become radiologists? No.

But if we can show them in a way, especially the last contact with the front desk coordinator, then great. Maybe they do schedule that treatment. And if not, you're gonna email them. Feel free to use these images.

Like I was saying earlier, if nothing else, submit the scaling and root planing bone level measurements with your existing documentation to help decrease your denials.

That's a huge win.

So, hopefully, you can see tonight that when we focus on patient care and the patient's understanding areas of concern that we're recommending, by using radiographs, we take the very best care of the patients. They do accept dentistry earlier and more often.

When we look at Pearl's, average case acceptance being thirty percent in the first thirty days, it's because teams have adopted this existing workflow where they just turn on the tooth parts or have the images up and ready for the doctor.

Now I am going to open up for questions in a few minutes, but I wanna kind of have you think about this for a minute.

Second opinion lives in a very easy website. Take the X rays, open up second opinion. In fact, in most teams have a little, desktop AI, and it clicks open, and the patient's name is right there. And we have the X rays ready to go forward facing, hopefully, on the monitor when those exams are, those doctors are coming to the exam.

We have a very exciting unique partnership we just announced with Carestream.

And we showed you before all of our second opinion images and how helpful this is for teams.

And it's a very simple workflow.

But what we wanna share with you tonight is taking that workflow and essentially eliminating that extra step of finding that website.

Inside of Carestream Imaging, you will now see Pearl's second opinion native integration.

You will be able to see this live in real time, and you simply click the images, an AI button, all of your detections appear, and you even have tooth parts.

So this is very fascinating for teams because they don't have to remember a password or where was second opinion desktop again? In fact, you'll probably have to turn the AI off to see your radio graphs if it's defaulted on.

This is really the most fascinating side of removing any challenge to workflow change.

So the fact that teams are putting second opinion directly into Carestream has been the big game changer. We talked about tooth parts. It's right here inside of Carestream.

And what I wanna share with you guys is that we've talked with a lot of offices, during beta testing, and they're beta testing with a second opinion.

And in the past, some integrations didn't build the whole set that Pearl had. They may have left out toothpars. They may have left out, you know, areas of, segmentation or even hover. There's some features that weren't inside of an initial native integration.

And I said, so what do you guys think about second opinion versus this native integration? I said, I know you don't have these these robust features. Is that concerning?

And they said, hands down, Sheela, I will take a native integration any day with less features over a basic second opinion. Now I love second opinion, but it is true. Right? I had seventeen hygienists.

Imagine trying to make sure the desktop button was always available for them. So having it natively integrated really helps that doctor, the hygienist, and the assistant in their daily workflow.

Tonight, we do have, a special offer, and I wanna make sure your team is aware of this, as we open up for questions.

But you will be able to scan this QR code and try out second opinion for your first month for free.

And, again, in just a moment, I am going to bring up the, the CE QR code, but I wanna stop here. I'm sure there have been some questions. So, Kimberly, if you see that there have been some questions in the chat, we'd love to open those up, and John and I are here to answer any questions you may have.

Sure. Bear with me while I come on while I come online here with you.

Yeah. A great question about just understanding the bone level measurements specifically and how those are where you how you get them. How does that work specifically? And do you still need to perio probe?

Well, wouldn't that be great if we didn't need to perio probe?

That would save so much time.

So we still need to perio probe. We cannot see where the gums are and the pockets are on the radiographs, unfortunately. But what most teams have been able to see is when we have a yellow line, which tells us that the bone level measurement from that CEJ to the bone crest is actually in an area of concern, it's gonna turn yellow.

That alerts your team to take a closer look, evaluate the existing probing depths, check that pocket, see if you need to move patient to the next type of dentistry, or how are we doing? Is it bleeding?

The yellow line is a reminder that there's warning to the patient and to the clinician so that we can always make sure that we're taking the best care of the patient. When you take the X rays, obviously, the more accurate the radiograph, the more accurate the AI will be. Right? Just like when we're trying to read them, people always ask me, does Pearl detect decay on overlap teeth?

Right? And I'm thinking, well, humans can't do that. But believe it or not, we're starting to see areas where the the molars are overlapped, and you'll see a little tiny pink dot. As a reminder, take a closer look because it's picking up those shades of gray.

So I think we're gonna see the AI really start moving into more diagnostic, place here in the near future. Bone level measurements are customizable, excellent for submitting claims, great for taking best care of the patients and using for patient education.

Thank you so much. And then there's been a couple questions about what it works with. And, obviously, we're here with Carestream Dental and focusing on that integration. Thank you, John, for for joining us.

But there is questions about what sensors, what different models, and then kind of there's a one piggyback, but I'll let you guys handle that first one first.

Sure. So I'm happy to let you know that we integrate with a lot of different, imaging systems, and, having the native integration is by far gonna be your easiest experience. But I think the best way to find out if it's gonna work for you is to scan that QR code, do a demo with your whole team, and have them take a look at that full suite of of Pearl second opinion practice intelligence. And also for Carestream, if you have that imaging system, this is really kind of a simple one click button, and you're able to focus on, wow.

I now have AI. I just need to make a quick phone call. There's a certain version, I think. Maybe John can help us out.

That's what I was gonna hope for.

Yeah. I I could speak to the Carestream. So Carestream, this is gonna work with anyone on an RVG sensor five thousand or six thousand series. So, really, even it's come out in the last six plus years.

In order to use native integration, you will have to update the latest version of the CSIA solution, which, you know, is included with the purchase of any piece of equipment. So you have it there. The update's pretty quick. It's very easy.

But yeah. So it's gonna sit. This is a refresher. Any Carestream RVG sensor and CSI eight is the software.

Right.

Great.

Perfect. I have a feeling this is another answer that it is a big it depends. Please contact us because there's so many variables, but there was a question about the subscription of pricing model and setup fees.

And maybe that's regarding this offer for Carestream Imaging that has to do with your first month free, and, obviously, we don't charge a setup fee for that. But, she's like, can you just maybe I've already answered that. It's it's gonna depend.

Yeah. I think so too. I think the best thing is to scan the QR code, take a quick demo. It's really probably fifteen to twenty minutes.

And with that first month free, we're able to honor that so we can look at your historical and make those decisions. And, you know, not described on this call, is really our second and third different sets of, tools that we have with Pearl. So you can also look at that, which would be more of the practice growth side of things where we're auditing all your charts and then ultimately insurance type verification tools. So tonight, what we wanna do is give you that offer to be able to just try this out.

Right? And what we always ask is, okay. What did you think, doctor?

And the second question is, what did your patients think?

Right? And I think an interesting statistic is that eighty seven percent of patients prefer to go to the dentist with the latest technology.

That was pretty that was a very high statistic.

When I was reading through that literature, I thought, wow. I was even AI fearful of AI AI I first started. I'm like, what is it gonna do? And as I've seen it really in action, there was one study that I was working on with the clinical team. And I actually had tears in my eyes, guys, because I was watching disease progression over AI.

And you would see, like, this little area of recurrent decay. And we can look in the practice management system and say, like, was it treatment planned? And it wasn't it wasn't. And then it would it got into a larger area of decay.

And then that patient came back a year later, and the tooth was completely broken off. Right? So I say tears because I'm thinking, wow. That patient could have got something done much earlier, and it's probably so expensive, and the patient could lose their tooth.

Now that's the extreme.

But at the same time, what happens with scaling and root planning as it progresses or what happens with these incipient lesions?

If we're having a tool to help make better decisions, then we're taking the very best care of our patients.

Thank you, Sheela.

Do you wanna tease any future, use? There's a question about CBCT.

Oh, yes.

How much do you wanna tease? Okay.

I just for this special group, I am going to share, hold on. Let me grab it, some new fun stuff. But the important part is to think about AI now when we're using AI, can it buy back some time for us? Right?

That's a huge that's a huge, win. But when we think about where is it going, I talked earlier about imagine the ability to have an image, and you think about how many months is it gonna be before it passes into the dentin. Right? Are we able to surface that?

And same thing with scaling and root planning.

Let me grab that slide for you. So is currently working on some CBCT stuff, and we're focusing on predictive analytics as well as thinking about taking notes for you. Right? That would be a really great thing.

So I remember when I went to the doctor last week and the doctor came in, and this was a regular, doctor. And he came in, and he's holding his laptop, like, right in front of his face. Hi, Sheela. How are you?

How have you been? Tell me how you're doing. And and I'm thinking, wow. Patient care has really, really left the building in this situation.

And imagine if they could just come in and start talking, and it would record everything.

Right? You wouldn't have to stay till six o'clock at night doing all of your charting. And so that is kind of the goal is how do we solve those pain points?

Okay. I found my CBCT slide.

Those pain points that really throughout the day when we know the staffing shortages that we currently are dealing with in dentistry, aren't going away anytime soon, can we find ways to use AI to automate mundane tasks so we can spend more time with our patients.

So we will be focusing on, this in the future and really kind of highlighting ways to be able to, show anatomical segmentation, thinking about, treatment planning as well as, like, that MBT area where we never know is that gonna exist in that tooth and how do we find that extra canal and fractures and such. So that's gonna be a very exciting suite that we move into.

This is not out yet. Everybody asked me, can I get can I get that tool? And this is what we talked about earlier, which does predictive analytics. Right?

And moving into, wow, what's imagine being able to show this to a patient, right, for their gums or their teeth and their bone when we're talking about the need for scaling and root planning. And ultimately, again, our teams are trying to focus on those pain points that you don't have to go in and chart every tooth. Right? You hover over and you can make that decision.

You don't have to go in and and write it I mean, not write in the chart, but click on tooth number four with, you know, two surfaces. So I think the future of dentistry is really going to be focused on how do we solve these pain points so that we can buy back time with our patients.

Is this all cloud based? Do I need to upgrade my office server? And I think you could take that both ways. Let's talk about the native integration inside Carestream Dental Imaging, but then also, the individual as well. So that's kind of a two parter question.

Yeah. I can again answer that. No. You wouldn't need to upgrade your server. This is all cloud based. What happens is with the latest soft version of the software, it just creates an an kind of a contact point, for lack of a better phrase, with the Pearl AI software.

So you won't have to make significant upgrade just a feature software.

Excellent.

Also, there's a question in the q and a, from Steven Miller about Logicon. I do I do wanna address. So Logicon is only interproximal. So we the reason we went with with with partners with Pearl, Lodge Council exists, obviously, because it's there. But we really went with Pearl is because LodgeCount only could detect interproximal, javies and carries, and Pearl is obviously much more robust than that.

So we've partnered with Pearl just, honestly, just for next steps. So to answer the question, I'll hope that answers it.

Yep. Excellent to have those periapical radiolucencies, those notable margins, right, extra bone level measurements, to be able to, again, act as those reminders while reviewing radiographs.

Perfect. Because it's cloud space, obviously, there's a ton of concerns about patients protecting patients' information. Can you speak to our patients' X rays being stored somewhere? What sort of cybersecurity is in place for this? John and Sheela, I'm sure, can answer.

Sheela, go ahead. You know the pearl system better. I can even find the care history piece, but the pearl piece is a more critical one here.

Yeah. I think the rigorous amounts of compliance, regulations, FDA standards, and protection policies we have to uphold are unbelievable. So there is not a concern.

We don't have to you guys don't have to worry about that as far as the compliance side of things. If you have additional questions, we have information on the website. We also have a full compliance team. They'd be happy to reach out to any of you. But we are in over a hundred and twenty different countries in the world, so we have a lot of patents, a lot of clearances.

We'd be happy to answer any questions or concerns you may have.

I think that the and AI answer the question there is the the X rays are not stored within Pearl. So the X rays would if you're using, for example, the native integration, everything is stored within your CSIA software. The the images themselves selves are all that's being transmitted. There's no patient data attached to them in any way, shape, or form. This is standard practice on our part. They are scrubbed. So Pearl does get obviously the X-ray itself with no patient identification information whatsoever.

Hopefully, that answers your question.

That's awesome. And then, yeah, are they stored or something like, ASW? But you answered that perfect, John. So as I was rereading the questions, the answer came in.

Thank you. That's what the answer they were looking for. Oh, one last question's coming in. Everyone drum roll, please.

Okay. There's a particular office that their imaging and software is, office based server, so it's cloud based.

I can answer this. I think when we're using the word cloud based, we I think it's creating some confusion.

So when we say cloud Got it.

Thanks.

Or the native integration, it is there's a cloud interaction. Nothing is cloud based. So we are going we're taking the scans from your site are being transmitted. The data is being transmitted up to Pearl and then transmitted back.

There's no storage that's being done in that process. It's still stored locally within your device. So if you have a you know, it's and it's not gonna significantly increase. Like, all of a sudden, your X rays are gonna quadruple in size.

So there will be no significant impact to that whatsoever.

And to your question about maximum storage, there is no storage. So it's whatever your your PC can hold. We build them. They've usually got more than enough space to store all of this on there.

So I will tell you a kind of an interesting success story.

We had a a larger DSO in Florida, and they had some storms and a bunch of Internet issues and some stuff went down. And they were calling us saying, wow. We're still able to see patients because we could pull up images in Pearl. Right? So that was a big win for them, and they were able to review radiographs and still move through those patients that had, you know, major emergency appointments during that time. So that's another added bonus for your teams.

There's a question that just came in the chat of, what does Pearl offer over the competition besides our integration with CS?

You have myself and Kimberly. That's all.

So I think it's a good question because, you know, there's a lot of AI companies out there. And the interesting thing back in the day when I started with Pearl, it was clinicians saying, why do I need AI? Or do I need AI? Or I don't need AI? And we've moved into a which AI company am I going to use time. So it's a great question.

For Pearl, our focus has been aligning with the clinicians.

And what we mean by that is we're built by clinicians for clinicians.

Not only are we making our interface very simple and intuitive, but when you look at our more robust suite, you're gonna find that you have an entire calendar that's organized based on opportunities for the doctors. These are gonna be printed out in a patient friendly format, so no longer having to audit charts. And, again, like I was saying, the full suite is allowing the entire patient experience to end how we always want. A patient understands the dentistry.

They accept it because they were given the quote in the office, and we're seeing with the X rays plus our daily printouts, alerting teams of unscheduled or AI detections, and the insurance verification.

That full suite is focused around optimizing the patient experience in a very simple way. And I think that's what separates our company from our competitors because we're not giving you codes to research, and we're also making sure that this isn't a workflow an easy workflow oriented layout so that you don't have to change anything in your day.

I also like our notable margins because those, like I was telling you earlier, are really helpful for teams to be able to take a closer look at. And so I would say you have to make your decision, but we have found that our interface and our ability to solve those pain points has really been the differentiator.

Awesome. Thank you, Sheela. And then, John, just some clarity here.

They're using CS Imaging. Great choice.

Eight point zero point two four. Does it have to be upgraded? And I think I know the answer, but I'll let you do it. Yeah.

It does. So this is the this version is gonna be eight dot zero dot two eight. It is releasing in the next couple weeks.

It's coming out as part of this we're actually this big announcement's gonna be next week in Chicago midwinter. So I was gonna say anyone at the Chicago meeting who wants to see more about this can come by either the Carestream booth or the Pearl booth. Both obviously will have this both be showing Pearl off there. But once you AI the latest version, you're willing to update eight zero two eight. We can easily assist you with that from two four to two eight. It's very easy. I mean, I actually went from two six to two eight earlier this week.

And then the last one I see is from the the the AI.

No. You have to be part of DSO. Pro is available to anyone and everyone. So all you have to do is have be a dentist. It's kind of it.

Perfect.

And really, like, is there a learning curve? What does it look like? What does onboarding role look like?

Yeah. That's a great question. And I think that's always the biggest fear, Right? Is how are we going to really bring this up in our workflow? What do I have to learn? There's a lot of colors.

And I'd like you guys to know that we do one on one team trainings. We also do our webinars that are CE AI, so you have a lot of access. We also provide, like, provider specific videos. So I'm a hygienist.

How do I do this? I am a doctor. Why do I need this? Or what do I need to push?

When you look at your basic home screen and you're looking at your FMX like you do now, you're just gonna see some dots that say, hey. There's some areas of concern here. There's AI four four or five colors. And these dots remind you to take that closer look.

You're inside of the interface, and whether you're in Pearl or a native integration like Carestream, the only thing you do is turn this off to view your desktop or how to where's the AI button?

But you have a nice legend in both of our systems to be able to remind you what calculus is green. And most teams, by the second patient they've used it on, completely understand how to do it. And, in fact, a lot of teams just go straight into it by watching our video. Very intuitive tool. Excellent question.

Perfect. So can you just I know you, referred this earlier. The little green boxes that are near the CEJ, maybe if we clear off the rest of the detections, it'll make that really clear. But, yeah, you just have it over at the calculus.

Yeah. Calculus is there. My favorite. Makes me wanna get my scaler out.

And then, also, we didn't really kind of highlight the situation where, you know, we go through and we talk about running so fast in dentistry. Right? And this patient comes in and, maybe they're diagnosed for a crown. And did we see that periapical radiolucency? Right? I hold my space bar down just like this. And are we thankful that that line is there?

Imagine back in the day where we used to watch black and white TV. Probably a lot of you didn't do that. I remember doing that. I actually had to get up and change the channel too. Heaven forbid.

So I do think that we as clinicians benefit from this, but when we talk to our patients asymptomatic lesions like calculus or periapical radiolucencies, we're really kind of allowing them to kinda be their own copilot in the diagnosis. Right?

And like I was saying earlier is you spend a lot less time showing shades of gray when you can bring it into a patient friendly colored version.

And that's really the magic of AI with case presentation.

Perfect. I love that. You know, if they can read Google Maps, they can read tooth parts.

A question about identifying implant systems. Is that on the road map, can that be done?

You know, we're everyone's used to holding their implants up to the what implant is this. I used to work in the implant land, so I Yes. I've gotten pretty good at it. It it is. I remember in in dentistry too, it's like, Bob's here in room four. He wants to do whatever.

What kind of you know, he wanna do the crown. What do we have the tools? Call the periodontist. Right?

Maybe they can swing it over at two o'clock. And it's really unfortunate that we're we haven't solved that problem. So I know there's a company, in Europe that has you're not in Europe. I know.

But that has somewhat solved that problem. I think that is on the road map at some point. Not right now. In the near future, we're trying to bring, the AI of the most widely used diagnostic tools to the market, like CBCTs and and that AI of thing.

But it is a wonderful ask. It is a huge pain point, and I'm sure it will become standard of of care for for AI companies to say, hey. This is Nobel or this is I don't wanna mention names, but whoever else it may be. But great question.

Perfect. Thank you so much.

Sure.

And I think that's the end of them.

Okay.

Well, that We're so grateful every one of us would love to talk to any of you, so please feel free to reach out. If you have any additional questions, looks like it's a free trial, so there's no reason to not try it. And, again, we look forward to seeing you, on some sort of training in the future. Thanks, everybody. Have a wonderful evening, and we hope to see you soon.

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