Good morning and good afternoon, everybody.

Thank you so much for joining us. I am Sheela Roth, head of clinical education at Pearl, and we're gonna give you just about two minutes to jump into this webinar.

Very exciting topic today about what changed when doctor Batoosiak brought in AI. We have a phenomenal last minute story, so you're gonna wanna stick around for that. Real life, application of cloud happening today with a giant storm. We're also gonna talk about AI and dentistry.

So very excited to have our, soda team here as well. And one thing I'd like to get started with as we're waiting for everybody is if you would please practice sharing in the chat because we're gonna have lots of time for you to have questions with doctor Bartusiak.

You can use the q and a. That's very helpful.

And we'd love to know what you think the average case acceptance is across the US.

So please just go ahead and pop into the q and a if you think it's ten or twenty or ninety. I know doctor Bartusiak is a bit of an outlier here, so we're gonna let him share in just a moment. But I have one. Thanks, Jenny. It looks like eighty percent is from one app one attendee here.

We have thirty, twenty eight, sixty.

Lots of different ideas.

Well, thank you again for joining us. Like I said, those of you that are coming in the morning or you're having lunch, we're glad you're here, and Pearl has multiple webinars. We'd love for you to check out our website if you're interested.

So let's talk about the actual answer to the case acceptance.

Doctor Doctor Martusiak, what do you think the actual average case acceptance is across the US?

Well, thanks again for having me. I sure do appreciate it. Welcome, to everybody that's joining us this this morning and this afternoon, of course.

Well, I case acceptance, I'm just, like, bunkers over. So I really studied it. And case acceptance on average in the United States runs between thirty five to thirty seven percent.

So that's AI of the average. New newer patients to come in, it's a little lower at twenty five percent because they haven't established that trust. Trust. Established patients a little bit higher, forty five to fifty percent.

Excellent. Thank you so much for that. Well, today, we're gonna be diving into exactly that and how AI can assist with that increase in your case acceptance and cloud imaging as well. These are not just buzzwords. Right? They're game changers for enhancing diagnostic confidence to streamlining workflows, boosting case acceptance, and these technologies are really reshaping the way that modern practices are operate.

And to pack all of this into this quick forty minute webinar, we are joined by none other than doctor Barry Bartusiak, who is a nationally recognized dentist, educator, and industry consultant with over thirty years in private practice.

He has lectured over six hundred AI, that's a lot, in Canada and even Italy.

He has really been known for turning around traditional workflows and making those extremely applicable, focusing on patient outcomes. Mhmm. Interestingly enough, he also serves as the team dentist for the Pittsburgh Steelers.

That's pretty impressive. I didn't know that. Today, he's going to open up and really AI talk about how his practice has changed when he brought cloud imaging in as well as Pearl's AI features.

So let's dive in, doctor Partiziak. Let's get started. I'm gonna share my screen, and I'm so excited to have you today to be able to walk us through real live applications. And, again, we're gonna get to your story in just a moment.

AI.

Ready to rock?

We are. As soon as I can get the right button here we go. Okay.

AI like dentistry to have a little snafu. Right?

Well, you're a trained hygienist, and I you're trained a lot of things, so, we'll just go with that. Right? Yeah.

Well, it's interesting, Sheela, that you mentioned the word dive right in today because, well, as fate would have it, we took a little dive today. We had a tremendous thunderstorm last AI. And so, we opened the door this morning and were greeted by ceiling tiles that were down, computers that were out, things that were just a wash in water. We had a a roof leak.

And also the rain, I guess, was so powerful that it came through the windows somehow, some way. And, we are dealing with a lot of issues right now. We have ten ops, thirty four hundred square feet. So we have a pretty big boy here.

And, fortunately, some of the operatories are away from the exterior AI, so we're able to utilize those today. But quite a challenging situation, and and one of the first things I I said to myself was, wow. I am so thrilled that we're on the cloud. Because if we're not on the cloud, the server would have gotten and that's where it was.

It would have it's near exterior wall. It would have gotten fried from the water, and I don't know how many days we would be out. I wouldn't have any data, any X rays, any nothing, and I can't imagine where I would be. So, oh, thank goodness for soda cloud.

Yes. Because it's all protected. So I have no worries with regards to that. Other worries, yes, but no worries with regards to that.

Well, on a side note, thank you so much for still coming to the webinar while your office is flooded, doctor Bartusi. Really nice of you.

And Kinda nice for me to get away from the chaos right now.

Yes. Perfect segue into the value of using cloud imaging. And we're gonna get in today to some of those, challenges that you might be thinking about as well as adopting AI. And the beauty here today is you're gonna see how you can combine the two.

So when we talk about AI, we're really just talking about simple systems, right, that can just simulate what we do on a daily basis, whether that's, hey, Siri or, whether that's using your Netflix. And when we move into how it's trained, it's, again, it's so mysterious when we hear about AI in the media, but in reality, it's really simplified. If we take some data and we train it on some algorithm, create some algorithms, and we output the results. And similar to thinking about training, we we could take a bunch of images of dogs, if you will.

Right? And we teach AI to learn this is a dog. But what happens now is we can become even more refined. It can learn that the Dalmatian is the one that has spots.

And that's exactly how radiological AI has been trained. We took a lot of data, and we were able to use a lot of different clinicians to be able to spot those areas of concern and teach an algorithm to be able to predict areas of concern for the doctors to review.

So as we move through cloud imaging, this is so interesting today. I just can't get over the story you have. But being able to have your dental X rays in the cloud really is a huge change for all of us that we're trying to think about AI should we, why should we not? I was visiting a friend of mine who owns a practice last week, and, I was sitting in their office, and all of a sudden, I heard this huge noise just started, not at AI a bump, but just it continued to get louder and louder and louder. And I'm like, what is that? They're like, oh, that's the server. It's this massive server sitting under the desk.

And so to your point, Barry, you have a position now where you're able to make sure that everything's backed up, everything's ready to go. But even what about, if you're sitting at home and you have a quick call and there's a toothache and an image that you can review, tell us a little bit about that.

Absolutely. And and this happens all the time. So I give my private cell phone out to our patients, as a courtesy, and and we kinda call as a as a baby blanket so almost so to speak, little I call it our insurance policy, you know, missus Jones, here's my private cell number. We did a couple crowns for you. If you need anything, you just text me and I will help you.

So about once a AI, I'll get a call and usually, it's not from that person, it's from and everybody who's in the dental field can relate to this. It's from a patient who hasn't been in for a couple of years, and they'll say, do you remember that tooth on the lower left?

You told me, it was gonna break and I would need a crown.

Of course AI do, missus Jones. I remember that like nothing. Yeah. Right. So AI, I'm yeah.

Right? And you're listening. You go, yeah. I've been in the car a couple of years, and you know what?

You were right. It broke. And it's Saturday morning, and maybe it's a long holiday weekend, and you're going, okay. And what am I gonna do?

I'm at home or actually, what happened? I I was just recently visiting my daughter in Orlando, Florida, and I was forty thousand feet up in the office texted me and was a similar scenario. And all I did was got on my little phone, punched it in, said, oh, mrs jones, I'm gonna, I called her back and was able to communicate with her, and said or the one on the plane AI was able to text actually and said, you know, I looked at your X-ray, and here's what's going on, and we'll see you on Monday. I'll call a call a prescription for you when I land.

And we just went off to the races with that, but I couldn't have done that without the capabilities of, soda cloud and pearl. So with that, it was you're just able to offer a patient the high level of care that they want and deserve.

I love that. I love that you share with me a lot too about how patient centric your practice is and being able to you know, we don't we don't wanna be answering phone calls and text messages over the weekend, but those are the ones that really need us. So the fact that we're able to do that and and, you know, people can log in to computers and stuff, but it's so much easier when you have everything you need at your fingertips.

So different types of AI, we've all been using machine learning, natural language processing, computer vision.

Anybody ever use Netflix. Right? So it's starting to learn the shows that we watch, and it's like, hey. We think you would like this. Right. Like, you watch a lot of those romantic little comedies.

So and we also think about natural language processing. You know, Siri is one perfect one. We've all used Alexa. We see those funny commercials. But, what about thinking about in dentistry where we're able to now have voice automated periodontal charting? Right? So there's a lot of ways where AI in dentistry is really focusing on streamlining efficiencies.

Those of us that have those blind spot monitoring, parking assistance, collision warnings, my car stops a little bit too abruptly when I back up almost into a trash can, but I'm really thankful it's there. Today, we're gonna talk a little bit more about the form of, you know, computer vision in dentistry, which is really responsible for dental radiology.

Another form too, though, it's very interesting, is teams are starting to use chat GPT to help them assist with claims and narratives, also patient letters and recall messages. So when we look at the bigger picture of AI in business, there's thirty five percent of businesses globally using AI today. In fact, this slide's a little bit old, so I think it's higher. And forty two percent of businesses are exploring AI.

So can you share with us first, what really piqued your interest in AI and cloud imaging? And is there a specific moment you AI these tools could really change the way you practice?

Absolutely. And and I kinda owe it to my four children AI honestly. Sheela, I have four kids between twenty two and twenty eight, and, one still in college. The other three are graduates. And so they're always with chat g p t this and that. They're like, okay. And they're like, dad, you need to do this.

Okay. And so they pulled me aside one day, and they showed me. AI I'm like, I you know, I was a little nervous or apprehensive, I guess, initially. I'm not sure why. Maybe the as you stated earlier, maybe the media has kinda colored that a bit, Sheela. And then I jumped into it, and I realized I was already using it in a way. Anybody today that picks up their phone and does a Google search for, oh, where's this restaurant, or should I eat, you know, chicken tonight, or whatever it may be, or what type of automobile should I be looking forward to purchase?

AI is going to generate a response for you. It it's it it is what it is. So it's in your life already. And so that kind of like my oldest son said, dad, you're you're already kind of using it.

And AI was like, oh. And he explained that to me AI, I guess I am. Okay. That's a good thing.

And then you said also about your, how it's already in your daily life, with your automobile and how you AI. And, like, oh, okay.

I don't know why I'm afraid. Maybe I listened to the media too much. So I I dove in and I haven't looked back. It's really been an absolute blessing to myself, my patients, my team. My team loves it.

One of the great things about Pearl that I just have to give this wow moment.

So we have an associate, he's a younger gentleman, of course. And it's just made such a difference in his life because he doesn't have the rapport with the patients that I do because I've been here for for so long. And he's able to show them films and get the wow that we all want, and the patient goes wow.

AI I was thinking about something this morning before the flood, and it was, you know, patients never say, wow. You have too much tech.

You're too you're too tech heavy. No one's ever, I don't think, uttered that.

But they will think, well and I just had a lady come in the other day going, I'm glad I'm here. My neighbor told me about you, and it's because you're just on top of everything in terms of technology, it seems. And you always they she said she'd been coming here for years, and we always have the latest and greatest, and we try to be on that cutting edge. And word gets around.

And high-tech, high touch practice is what we try to be. High-tech, high touch. Meaning, we're still gonna take care of you, still gonna, you know, bend over backwards to make sure that we're giving you the great care that you deserve because those dollars are hard earned. I understand that.

And we wanna make sure that they're getting the care that they expect and deserve. So it's we we love when patients go wow. And you had a slide up there previously that shows the colors, and I can't wait to to share that with everybody again. That is just AI the one that everybody goes, wow, When they see their teeth and those colors up there, it's it's unbelievable.

Yes. That that is the wow factor for sure.

Our industry takes so many images. Right? And so on a daily basis, dentistry alone is responsible for one point four billion dental X rays captured annually in the US.

That is a lot of images, and we are still walking in front of patients showing them these beautiful X rays with the little white, and there should be gray in there. Do you see the gray? And today, we're gonna talk about how what doctor Bartusiak was saying, how we've moved from, really kind of letting patients see what we see. And the other thing that's interesting about your high-tech, high touch is a staggering statistic is eighty seven percent of patients prefer to go to a dentist with the latest technology.

So you're definitely in that category. And in AI and medicine, when we think about talking about how X rays are really the cornerstone behind patient care, right, we can see that in this study alone with mammography, we looked at how there was a twenty percent increase in AI.

And this wasn't false positive. This wasn't like there's something over here. It's incorrect. This was an actual study where they were able to confirm that based on surgery. And we think about that with dentistry.

And we see here in Pearl as well that when clinicians that are using AI in dentistry, they're finding thirty percent more thirty seven percent more disease that's detected.

So with simple AI happening live in real time in your practice, you're able to take images, have them pop up with these color coded pathologies. You see the darker pink compared to a lighter pink telling you that disease progression for that caries has passed through the DEJ, and now you put it in color coding formats here. There's calculus boxes, notable margin, periapical radiolucencies, as well as bone level measurements for the hygienist to monitor the the periodontal disease, and your front office team can also use these images to submit for claims to decrease the reimbursement denials.

So it's been a win across the board for many teams, and it's interesting to see how we really have just taken zero change management and been able to improve our case acceptance. And what I mean by that is we're already using X rays, we're already using sensors, and we're already presenting dentistry to patients. So when we think about using AI in dentistry, this is where it's been a game changer for patient trust and their ability to understand the dentistry you're recommending.

You talked about the wow wow factor, doctor Bartusiak, and, it's really impressive when a when a team member has used AI in dentistry and they get that one moment where the patient says, oh, wow. That makes sense to me now. Oh, wow. I didn't see that before.

Oh, wow. I better get that done. Oh, wow. That's interesting. Right? So talk a little bit about this statistic here that you have in real this is not your statistic.

But in real life practice, sixty four percent of patients say they do not understand their X rays during a consultation.

So let us know a little bit more about how your team is using AI in the chair and also what your patients are really seeing. How about new patients versus existing patients?

Patients? Well, Sheela, I think you're absolutely spot on, and I you know, sixty four percent is two thirds, and I think it's probably higher.

It's so hard to read those X rays. AI I mean, we don't know what we don't know as humans. Correct? So as we look backwards pre AI and we're just discerning these various shades of gray, that's all we're various shades of gray. Light, dark, is it there? Is it not there?

It's so challenging. I think a bitewing is still the hardest film to read on the planet, but AI has just enhanced that so much. And correct me if I'm wrong, Sheela, but I think that AI read somewhere that Pearl is eighty nine percent accurate.

I think that's just right on.

Right on. Okay. So I asked myself the other day as I'm looking at X rays and and, we have, everything is in bloom here in in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And my my eyes were watering.

AI this lady I was treating, she's has like twelve cats and I'm allergic to cats and whatever. Sorry. And my eyes are watering. I'm trying to look at these x rays.

I'm thinking if I didn't have pearl, I don't even I don't even know if I could read the, it was kind of one of those watershed moments. Right? And then I asked myself a question, and I'm not trying to talk to myself in third person, but Pearl's eighty nine percent. What is Barry?

And and every dental professional can relate to this. What is Barry's percentage? Because if I had a tennis shoe factory just work with me for a second. If I had a tennis shoe factory and I own the factory, I wouldn't be producing the tennis shoes.

I would be in an office and I would be making sure that, our accounting was on spot or even if I was the accountant as or I was head of HR, I wasn't making the tennis shoes. I was having ten other people in the practice make the or in the factory make the tennis shoes.

In the office, Barry is one of the biggest producers.

And so I'm making the tennis shoes, so to speak. So in addition to wearing the HR hat, the accountant hat, and right on down the line, I'm the chief producer. So how many times is it, how many times do you hear this? Hey, doc.

Hey, doc. Hey, doc. Hey, doc. Hey, doc.

That's, like, within four minutes.

Correct? And you're going, okay. Yeah. What two of those, one of those. We need one more of these.

Yeah. I'll talk to him later. Okay. That's, decay on this one. And it's easy to get out of sync and and out of what was I doing?

And sometimes I, you know, fully admit I have the attention span of a rabid squirrel, and I'm going, okay. Where was I? I need to oh, it was missus Jones' x rays that I was looking at, not, you know, mister Smith's, and I need to go over here. And so Pearl has simplified that so much for me because now I can just focus.

Our team can our team loves it because they can just go, hey, doc.

There you go. Hey, doc. For missus Jones, as you can see on that number thirty, she's probably gonna need an endo. She's reporting this that would be consistent with that even before I walk in the room.

So quite honestly, the team has bought in key key factor there because we as dentists, we all have a closet, don't we? We all have a closet and or a drawer where we have a bunch of stuff that we bought over the years and it's a dust collector. Right? Pearl isn't that.

Soda isn't that. You're gonna use that constantly, constantly, constantly, constantly. And that's one of the beauties of it. Your team buys in.

As soon as they use it, they just loved it. I mean, they just jumped in with it. And it has just been an absolute game changer for us and it and, you know, solidified our case acceptance because, you know, economic times can be turbulent at times as, as is evident right now. And so we've been able to withstand that, turbulence, probably because of, what Pearl's done for us.

Excellent. And I think it's important to also think about, you know, being able to know that this works in live real time, but you're not using or are you using AI as your main diagnosis? Right? Are you able to just trust that eighty nine percent? So my question is, doctors always ask me, Sheela, I'm the doctor.

I don't need the the X-ray to diagnose for me. My answer is always, well, I I understand that, but I don't need navigation to tell me how to get somewhere, and I don't need spell check either. But it's really nice to have both. So can you answer that question for me? What do you really think about being able to address that question? How do I think about AI as it replacing me or diagnosing for me?

I think we need to set our egos AI, as you stated with your car.

And said, you know, hey. I've been here ten times, but maybe there's a faster way to get here today because of traffic. And you live in Southern California. Right? And so traffic, that can be an issue. Right? So I think it's an adjunct.

I think it's an affirmation. I'm huge on affirmation. Sometimes I'll go to a CE class, and my team will say, well, what did you learn over the weekend at your CE class? I'm like, nothing new.

I'm like, nothing new? I'm like, no. That's a good thing because that affirms that we're right where we should be. We're right on top.

That there's we're we're good to go. And they're like, oh, yeah. I guess you're right. So that's a wonderful thing.

Peace of mind. I love peace of mind.

That has been a big thing for our associate because the way we have it set up is he's here half the time by himself on purpose so that he can learn and grow. And during those times, he needs some reassurance. And sometimes it's reassurance for me, but sometimes it's just reassurance from Pearl that, yep, I got it. So I think to answer your question, it we're not in competition here. It's an it's a way to boost your behavior and make sure that you're getting it right.

Absolutely. Yeah. And during those FDA trials, we looked at, like I was saying, those studies where just the dentist looked at X rays and marked up cavities, and it they were not perfect. And then we looked at just the AI, and the AI was not perfect.

But, really, the increase came in in accuracy was when we AI the clinician plus the AI. So it is true. We are better together. And speaking of better together, our SOTACloud team was one of our first native integrations where Second Opinion, which is Pearl's radiographic, tool will allow you to just open a website and be able to look at those images live in real time.

But inside of SOTA Cloud Imaging, you don't have to go anywhere. You just push one button, and the AI appears. So it's been really very interesting, to go through some of these beta tests. And I remember talking to a lot of the doctors, and AI say, okay.

So, you know, here's second opinion, and and here's, you know, it AI of your imaging system. And, you know, there's different tools and different features, and tell us a little bit about, you know, how this is working for you. And nine out of ten doctors would say, this integration is unbelievable. I don't have to go anywhere else.

And and we know as clinicians too is one minute or one second in that appointment is valuable. So being able to know that you don't have to do anything different, You're just pushing one button to be able to see the AI, and you can push one button to have it off. So that way you're really going through your, ability to make those decisions much faster. You have more data.

Right? So we're we can see as we hover over this area of decay, it's providing that additional breakdown, you know, how much of that segmented lesion, is made up of decay and and what parts of the tooth. And then also moving into, like you're saying, this case presentation where, you know, patients don't understand, you know, some of the simple things I was challenged with all the time was and where really we kinda think about the trust factor from a patient is, well, why why do I need a new crown, and why is it nine hundred dollars? Why can't I just have a new filling if I have decay around my filling?

Right? Or why do I need to come back three times for a cleaning? Can't you just do that simple cleaning that my insurance covers? I know it's been a few years.

And moving patients from something that was really invisible in their minds that's creating a lot of distress in our space to something visible with these images has been kind of a real game changer. And especially when it's natively embedded inside your imaging system, your teams don't have to go elsewhere.

So I would say, I think you've really kind of talked a lot about, how your team has been using SOTACloud and and how they've been using AI. Do you have this pull do they does the team pull it up for you, or or do you look at it in your own operatory? Tell us a little bit about, how your team goes through that basic workflow with bringing AI and SOTACloud in.

Sure.

Just to amplify what you stated, Sheela, about AI.

Accountants and attorneys, they have it right. They charge by the Okay. Just the street, not so much. We charge by the procedure.

And, you know, sometimes missus Jones opens up about a quarter of an inch, and you're working on fifteen and good luck. And, sometimes it goes nice and smooth, but we never know that because they don't wear a t shirt that comes in and says, I'm gonna be a highly cooperative person today or a t shirt that says, I'm gonna give you a big p I t a. So that being said, we have to make sure that every second counts because, unfortunately, time is money. And money is a tool that we use, and we need to AI accommodate that and and account for that.

So it's very I wanna also touch about one thing else additionally.

The integration of this was so simple. I mean, it's always there's always a hesitancy of the practice to go, oh my gosh. We have to switch. Oh gosh.

Oh, that that's gonna be AI this major headache. Grab me the bottle of aspirin. Grab me the bottle of Jack Daniels. Here we go.

And it was nothing like that at all. It was just seamless.

And I think that's what really made our staff just jump in with two feet, wholeheartedly because they could really it was just, like, very simple. And so that being said, you talk about workflow.

And workflow was very simple to describe. I have an excellent team. One of my theories in life is don't hire, people with, dental skills. It's AI the great personality. And so only two people three I'm sorry. Four people in our practice, two hygienists, two dentists, have dental skills originally. Everybody else, we've kind of hired off the street because they had great personalities.

So hire the person that's with a great personality. I can teach them the dentistry. I can't teach them a personality.

And with that being said, we we have newbies and we taught newbies, this, and they jumped right in and they saw the value of it. I love what you said, especially perio speaking. Perio is sort of like hypertension.

Boy, if if it hurts, it's too late. And you, as a hygienist, you have to make the the invisible visible.

You have to make the invisible visible. How you guys do it? I don't know. God bless you.

It's amazing how you do that. But what you can do with soda cloud and pearl is you can say, oh, there's the measurements. There's the calculus. And I'm gonna show you this is wow.

I can see it now. And so just to go through workflow for you for a second to answer that question, patient comes in, staff listens, we use our ears a lot, listening is a lost skill or maybe we can get it back, But we really AI to our team to use their ears. So we listen to missus Jones. She tells us what's going on.

We take the appropriate films.

Our team kinda has a pretty good AI idea what's going on. They don't diagnose, but they'll come to me. And let's say we're looking at this film, that we see here. Doc, we have a broken number eighteen, fractured distal cusps. We have decay because of extrusion on number fifteen.

Looks pretty significant.

She's reporting pain on both fifteen and eighteen. You could check that out.

So it's kind of already done for me. They might actually because the of the colors, the patient just goes, wait a minute. Wow. We also have to remember who's the most important person in our AI.

Me.

So just to amplify that for a second, when I'm done with the webinar, I AI I'm gonna think about where I need to go next in life. I need to go to the gym today. I need to go get a haircut. I need to pack for a trip to Italy and Greece, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

It's all about me. Right? Because I'm thinking about me. Now I have four children. I love them dearly, and I think about them all the time, but I'm the most important person on the planet to me.

And so that patient is looking at that, and that patient is just thinking about those colors of their teeth. What's going on? Oh, my gosh. It's never been shown to me that way before.

And they're already, the trust factor has just kind of gone through the roof. So if they trust you, they will buy you. If they don't trust you, if you don't explain things in a certain way, here's the phrase that they usually use because most people are polite. I am going to go home and think about it.

You ever hear that one before?

Yeah. Check my schedule too.

I have to check. That's another one. I have to check my schedule. Let's see. It's on my phone.

That's how I got here, but I haven't checked my schedule. Right? Very polite. So the we lost them.

We lost them because nobody's pacing at home that I saw yesterday that said, oh, I'm gonna go home and think about it. They're not pacing back and forth going, oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. What should I do?

Maybe I should call AI priest. Maybe I should call the rabbi. I don't know. So I try to just I don't know what I should do.

No. They're not doing that.

No. Come on. You lost them somehow on the explanation.

They either got too much information or it wasn't clear to them. It wasn't explained well. Somewhere along the line, you lost them. What Pearl and Soda have done for us is they have made that seamless. They have made it right in front of them. They've given you the wow factor, and it just has made it easy. And our case acceptance, Sheela, bounces between and this is for the last three years, bounces between eighty eight and ninety two percent.

That's unbelievable.

We're very, very fortunate. We have a great team that works together with us, and we're able to or just driven our marketing costs down dramatically, by the way. But what it's done is it's just uplifted our practice.

We have, we leave happy. We come in happy, you usually, same for when we have a flood. But adapt and overcome, you know, tomorrow will be a better day.

But Uh-huh.

It's made a huge difference in sustaining that and allowing us to be, AI the great care that we AI to do every day.

Yes. AI that statistic is staggering because I've never heard that. And when we walked through that, I was just blown away that that's possible. And it it really is interesting too to tie it into thinking about marketing because your patients are really a walking marketing billboard.

Right? And what I love most about AI is if they're seeing what you're recommending and they do it earlier, it's a huge win. Right? They we know as clinicians, they keep their tooth structure, which means hopefully less treatment over time.

It's less expensive.

It's less painful, and you're gonna retain that patient, and they're gonna go tell their family and friends. So I think that we all went into dentistry to help patients, and that's why seeing that you have a system now that can actually let patients see what you're recommending. Like, we see this big red area on, you know, for those of you that are on the call or clinicians, on tooth number thirty. And, you know, we can talk about, does it need a root canal?

Will it need a root canal? Post op expectations. And I think that's really thinking about having the AI there to talk about the case presentation. When I was training doctors in the beginning, he's like, I don't even know what these cartoon teeth are supposed to do.

I don't really think I need anatomy. And I said, no. This was the sweetest AI. I think he was eighty two still practicing.

I said, this is this part's for your patients. And he's like, oh, that makes a lot more sense now.

Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

So and I know also inside of soda cloud, they've taken, you know, the AI radiological side to a whole another level. Right? We talk about presenting AI directly in soda cloud, but they also have an extensive, AI Corps Academy where they're able to go in and and show additional, you know, images and so much more. Tell us about using, this part of SOTACloud and how it's really enhanced the case acceptance.

Absolutely.

An educated patient makes the best choice. Mhmm. And the more they understand, the more they trust you, the more they're going to say yes. So we try to go to great lengths and use this as one of those aspects.

So it's not just, you know somebody asked me the other day, it was a couple of weeks ago, said, well, how is your case acceptance so high? And I said, it's not one thing. It's a bunch of things that are stacked upon each other. And I Corps Academy is one of those things.

Pearl is one of those things. But you add up all of that aspects, and it's that synergy effect, that cumulative effect that provides us with that high level of case acceptance. And so a a patient sees this, understands, asks questions.

And so if you sit down AI to eye, need a knee with them, whether it's me, whether it's the hygienist, whether it's the assistant, we all chip in together, we all spend time with that person. We also have to remember that the most trusted people in the practice are the assistant and the hygienist.

And doctor, if you think that I'm wrong, step out of your cubicle like I have about twenty five years ago, and I learned a great lesson. I just had stepped out of the cubicle. I think I needed to tie my shoe, and I was outside of the cubicle. And I heard the patient ask the assistant, what would you do? And the question was get a three unit bridge or get an implant.

And I thought to myself, wow.

That patient didn't ask me. That patient asked the assistant.

And so what if you have an assistant that goes, oh, you know what? You're not gonna put a screw in my head. You gonna do any dental implants, doctor? Probably not.

So we all need to be on the same page and share those, values together about the best treatment possible. And remember that, you're the big bad doctor. You're the doctor that's gonna AI a nice car. You're the doctor that's gonna take their family to Disney World and they don't see the benefits that the assistant of the hygienist get. So they kind of inherently have more trust. So they're gonna get asked a lot of questions. So my assistants and my hygienist use these types of, the like the I Corps Academy, these types of modalities a little bit more than me because the patients ask them those types of questions.

Yes. Very well stated. I I remember that being an assistant, and they would always ask, would you do that? Would you Yeah.

Put a crown on that too? Then I I would kind of kinda giggle a little inside thinking, yes. The doctor just told you all of this. But to your point, they do.

They they come in with all these crazy questions. Right? Oh, you're going to Italy? Oh, must be nice.

Did did my crown pay for your kids', you know, college books this year? Like, really very negative. Right? And if they only knew what it was like to be a dentist and physically, emotionally, all of the, you know, different parts of all the things dentists go through on a daily basis, they probably wouldn't ask those questions.

So focusing on, we talked a little bit about this already. I'd like to know as far as training goes, were there any hiccups, that you had with, hey. AI is on. Take a closer look. Right? They have three colors.

Was there a learning curve or anything that you would tell anybody about worrying about getting training done or or moving to the cloud, and how do I access my images?

AI gotta tell you. I just bought a new truck, and it was a Honda Ridgeline. And I probably spent five times more time trying to figure out seat positioning and, what's this button for and what's that lever for than I did with Pearl and Soda with my entire team.

I love that. That's so funny. Yeah. I was looking for the manual when I got my car, and it was like, oh, no. It's in the car. You have to, like, sit in the car and watch the stuff. I'm thinking, this is not efficient.

No. Exactly. You hit the nail on the head. So it was far more complicated.

And you think, okay. I've been driving a vehicle since I was sixteen, and this is something kinda new to the world, if you will, Pearl and SonataCloud, and you go, wow. And I can learn that that quick versus trying to drive my new Honda truck. So, very seamless, very, user friendly.

Both have great, great, great, great, great support.

No hiccups. Work with your own IT team to make sure that everything is nice and seamless. Couldn't speak higher of it.

Love that. Okay. Well, we're gonna talk about training now. So we're gonna go through a little exercise.

If those of you could chime into the chat, how many areas of decay do you see on this image? So we love to hear. Please join in. Let us know how many areas of decay are you seeing here.

And keep in mind, you're relaxing on a webinar to doctor Bartusiak's point. You're not hearing from a hygienist or the ordering company or someone's on the phone or you know? And, also, you know, it's very interesting to think about the studies we have on diagnosis fatigue. Right?

So having a second set of eyes operating in the background is very nice. Let's see what we're getting here.

I have seven areas of decay, and we have four areas. So let's see the results here.

So we can see four areas of decay. Three are interproximal. As well as if you hover over, you can see that caries breakdown, how far it's in the dentin, how far it's in the enamel. Couple things that I found very interesting that doctors have told us recently is they really like the fact that, there are two colors.

Right? And the two colors represent light pink being enamel only. So are we gonna remineralize? Are we gonna watch?

Obviously, we're gonna educate. And then the second part is as that, lesion has on the radiograph, right, passed through the DEJ, it's gonna turn to a dark pink. So a lot of clinicians say, yep. I go straight in.

I look at dark pink real quick, and then I scroll over and look at the little, incipient lesions.

And the other thing to point out here too is some doctors were saying, wow. Pearl's aggressive. And I thought, what do you mean? Like, well, we're not gonna fill those little those little pink lesions. And we said, no. We're so thankful. Our job is to point out early areas of pathologies for your doctors to educate patients, focus on minimally invasive dentistry.

And we love when patients have have or doctors have told us that patients have come back and said, I am so excited. I have been flossing. I wanna make sure on my new X rays that none of the light pink ones turn dark pink. Right?

So I think that's important to understand is this is live in real time in SOTA Imaging with your Pearl AI features. You have difference in caries to allow you to navigate through images faster, And the goal is to use this for patient education, and it's called second opinion because the doctor makes the first and final decision. Right? So we already talked a little bit about, how the transition was moving to SodaCloud, and I think the important thing here is, looking at an additional feature with, SodaCloud.

I really love this feature. I always tell the Soda team this, but in my old practice I used to manage, we we had twenty five hundred hygiene visits per month. Right? That's a lot of patients.

And you can imagine the referrals because we referred out quite a bit of dentistry, for endo at the time. They brought an Adonisin house, but and we would always be getting these emails printed out and figuring out, you know, where did Bob go? Did he get that root canal? Oh, here's a here's a paper.

I think the root canal was done. Do we need to do a crown? Which is really can you imagine that process in medicine? Right?

And I and I'm joking because there was a process, but it was extremely inefficient.

And the fact that soda cloud also has the ability to share these types of, referrals to different patients, I'm sorry, different patients, different practitioners, as well as additional metrics that they have. I know they talked about, which images are taken, how long, how many did each practitioner images take how many did they take. So I'd like to know from the SOTACloud platform, what is your favorite tool inside of SOTACloud AI, obviously, the the imaging and the AI?

Well, I'm gonna be a little bit biased here because I I really enjoy the factor that I can get it anywhere at any time. Traveling a lot, to see my four kids, four kids, four states.

So I like that. I also get to teach across the country. So, that's kind of the most important thing to me, MIT.

My team really likes the tracking aspect of it because we're not losing patients, through the cracks. How you did it with that many hygiene visits a month, I have no clue what I mean, that's just a lot of humans, by the way, to, adapt to and go through.

I mean, wow. That's a lot of personalities.

You're amazing.

So my team likes this the most because they can, mister Jones will call in and say, oh, was I supposed to go do that? You know, you doc, you have that patient. Was I oh, who was that for? Oh, I just got that done. What do I oh, no. Oh, that I so I've had a patient last week.

AI, I got that implant done.

No. No.

Sent you for a root canal. No. No. No. He he was arguing with our front desk.

No. No. No. I got a I got an implant. Now you you you got a root canal done.

And so this has been very, seamless for them because patients AI, they don't know. And this has been able to, usher them along, shepherd them along, if you will, through the process so that it's much much smoother as you stated. Yes.

Yeah. I I really love this tool. I remember when a patient would come up and they'd be in pain and we get them to the endodontist, you know, within the hour, and we were the hero. And but I would always say to them, you're going to be out of pain.

I know that the root canal is costly. But if you don't get the restoration on top of that, once you're finished and out of pain, you will not preserve that investment. Right? Because we'd see so many people get a root canal, and they would live with that temporary restoration for so long.

And they'd come in, they'd say and AI be oh, jeez. We're gonna have to actually, like, extract the tooth and do an implant now. Right? So being able to track this has been really really impressive tool.

Again, we were talking about the exam analytics, reducing the wait times, and, ultimately, that's very satisfying for a patient. It was funny when I used to be a consultant, I looked through a bunch of reviews.

And, you know, when you read Yelp reviews on dentists, right, it doesn't talk about wonderful crown margins and Yeah. You know, these wonderful things that we spent years and years honing our skills, but it talks a lot about AI was in and out. It was efficient. I I love the dentist.

It was great. Great experience. No cavities. Had a had a free toothbrush. Right? And and the reality is the the time the patient's in the chair, on average, I think it's now, they wanna be in and out in fifty minutes.

Right? So efficiency is key. Yes. I used to think the longer I I spent cleaning the patient, you know, the more they would be thankful.

And another patient would cancel, and I'd be like, oh, I'm gonna just keep you a little longer. And they get to the front desk, and they'd say, I don't know what treatment I need. I gotta get out of here. I was supposed to leave twenty minutes ago.

Right? So it's funny what we think versus what the consumers think.

Same thing here. We think about the cloud and all the incredible benefits. Right? And there also is some fear just like there was some fear in AI taking our jobs and diagnosing for us, which we talked about is very untrue today. I'd like to get your opinion too on really, is the cloud safe? What about HIPAA compliance?

We talked a little already about your scenario today with what happens with the cloud. So I think that's a true testimonial. But, really, what if I'm nervous? I like my server. I like that very large annoying thing sitting on the floor being very loud. I'm kidding, but that's what it was.

And and those of us that have been in dentistry for so long, that's what we're we're, challenged with is is the is the cloud safe?

Well, in nineteen o eight, there was this guy in Detroit, Michigan.

And what he did was he sort of changed things for us a little bit. Wink wink.

And what you're alluding to is change is hard for us. Mhmm. And we've become used to things. Well, this is the way we've always done it.

Okay. And and it's like that old pair of jeans. And okay. But if we stuck to that, and if we didn't change and let's go back to that gentleman in in Detroit, Michigan in nineteen o eight.

So that guy figured, I can make this car called a model t and sell it to the masses.

His name was Henry Ford.

And he came up with the assembly line and how that changed life.

So just think, if you're the stagecoach guy, if you're the horse guy, if you're the horse and buggy guy, well, we don't need that car thing. We're we're fine. That thing with four wheels, no. Just keep your horse.

You're gonna be fine. No worries. Your your world isn't gonna change with that. Oh, but it did.

And I truly believe we are at that inflection point with AI and robotics and things of that nature. We just need to adapt to our new world.

AI had a patient today say, boy, I have to have knee replacement surgery, and the doctor said he's going to use, an a robot to assist him. And I'm really nervous about that. And I'm like and he goes, you know what else, doc? He goes, that's that's gonna take a job away from somebody.

I said, no. It's not. He goes, what? AI said, no. It's not. Somebody has to build the robot.

Somebody has to program the robot. Somebody has to build the software for the robot. It's just directly resources from one to another. So we're at a time right now where we're just kind of shifting.

Shift happens. Sorry. AI had to throw that in.

It's just a natural occurrence of progress, and we're in that time frame. And there's some pain inflection points, but I can assure everybody that's out there that I experienced it today because of a severe thunderstorm last night.

I'm so grateful I don't have a server. I would've lost absolutely everything.

Everything gone. Because where the where the storm actually hit worst in our practice, that's where the service at. Everything would have been gone. I don't know how long I would have been out of business, not been able to serve my patients.

It it just would have been one catastrophe upon another. So, yes, it's safe. Yes. It's HIPAA compliant.

And here's the you know, it's it's functional when the Internet goes down because it just it just gets saved, and you can access it once the Internet gets back up. So, wow, I'm living proof that sadly, yes. I'm living proof. I I didn't wanna be the, example kid today, but, yeah, I guess I am.

Yeah. When I talked to you this morning, and and Frank and I run a little earlier from SilverCloud, and Frank's like, is is doctor Pruptunia yet coming? I'm like, yes. And he has a great story. In fact, Marsha's on the call here, says she's been using soda cloud as well for teledentistry.

So we talked about that earlier.

I would just say too as far as change management, think about the days when we went from those lovely developer, fixer, crazy room Dip tank.

Oh, love the dip tank.

Can move directly into even digital imaging. And now we're taking that that small leap, I would say, into AI and dentistry where we see it as really, ultimately, probably the standard of care, pretty soon.

I would also like to, ask you, really, I think you already answered this. So you talked a lot about having, you know, people that are interested in in the journey that you've been on and have really given us such incredible stories today about a seamless AI imaging system, cloud being able to solve a huge problem today. We think about the cost of just being down for one day.

Unreal. Right.

Right. And if if your team if you're on this call today and you think this might be a good fit, And and as they were getting used to using it as well, I'm sure that had an impact.

Absolutely. It had a great impact. In fact, one of the things, it was about a week ago.

Our lady at the front desk, I said, wow. It's AI eleven o'clock. You're you're having lunch early. She goes, yeah.

AI I'm like, well, why? I'm just curious. And she goes, insurance for verification already done with Pearl. Made my life simple.

Like, okay. Well, there you go.

So what a testimonial from her. Right? There you go. So who doesn't like an early lunch?

Yep. That is a great point. We we really love that besides the radiological side of Pearl, we have an incredible ways for your teams to be able to focus on saving AI, like we talked about, for your front office teams, color coding schedules with opportunities, and really providing those printouts for each each AI when they come in for the day, but also verifying insurance. So we we do welcome you to come and join us on one of those, demos here. And, Kimberly, did you have any other questions before we wrap it up?

Yes. There's one that just popped in that I think would be phenomenal. So the question is, what would your advice be to get my doctor on board with Pearl for a provider who's skeptical to hop onto the AI train?

Thank you, Savannah. That's a great question.

Well, there's always you can get a wiffle ball bat.

That's a good start.

You know, there could be some bruising and swelling, but, I I think that if you sit down, it's just logical.

It this isn't anything that's super fancy. This isn't anything that's, it just comes down to basic logic. And doctor, do you want us to be more efficient? Do you wanna have your patients happier, your teammates happier, and you're actually gonna make a little bit more money?

If they don't answer yes to all four of those, why do we wake up this morning? Right? So that would be I would say, get a demo and say, hey, doc. Guess what we're gonna do over lunch today? We're gonna get a demo done.

And just chain him to the chair if you have to or her through the chair and do that, and I think Awesome.

That's fun.

Okay. And then one additional. It's AI once the questions start, they keep going.

Do the pearl interpretations or detections share or save on the images so you can email those images to insurance or referrals? Since we mentioned a little bit about that, I think think Yeah.

That but but speak on to what what it looks like historically if you were to look back, compare that sort of thing.

Sure. So the short answer is that, yes. And that is, you know, insurance carriers are not our friends, folks.

I know we all know that, but we have to remember that. And so anytime they can find a little bit of an answer to say no, they're gonna say no. So the more evidence we can provide them, photos, X rays, a pearl image that shows the shades, the colors that make it more definitive and make it challenging for them to say no, the better and easier it is for submission.

That's a great point. And with second opinion printout, you can go ahead and click on any image and being able to print that out for your patient if they wanna take it home, if you're presenting dentistry, as well as being able to send those directly, with your claims or just taking a a beautiful little screenshot of those bone level measurements, sending that with those probings and those X rays and being able to spend less time writing appeals.

Yes. That's correct. Right. And that just delays everything. Correct.

Mhmm. Wonderful.

Well, I know we're at time. So, I will throw that back, to you, Sheela, and doctor Bartusiak. Thank you.

Thank you, Kimberly. And thank you to the soda cloud for joining us today. Doctor Bartusiak, thank you so much for taking the time. We really will be thinking of you while you navigate through this storm and all of the the tragedies that dentistry always brings us, but at the same time, there's so much joy and so many ways to pivot when we have these emergencies. So thank you for still joining us. Thank you for sharing everything, and we look forward to seeing you on an upcoming webinar. And, hopefully, everything goes well in the next few days where you recover through this flood.

Gil, it's been an absolute pleasure, and, I'm gonna go grab a mop.

Okay. Here.

Have a great day. Bye bye. You well.

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