Today, I want to explore the world of connected dental space with a Brooklyn-based technology company called Toothpic. The company is minimizing the risk of major dental work with an approach that it's calling Smart Dental.

Smart Dental is based on applying new technologies like Teledentistry, 3D Mapping, IoT-connected toothbrushes, and augmented reality. It shifts care from treatment to prevention with the enablement of new diagnostic approaches such as AI pattern matching to guide dentists' diagnoses. It heralds an era of ultra-personalized oral care for patients.

Through an app, users upload pictures of their teeth which are then assessed by a network of dentists on an ongoing basis. Patients no longer need to wait for appointments and have up to the minute access to their dental records. The improvements in dental health are significant. Toothpic was founded by Mark Moore, an Irish-born former physicist, back in 2016. Mark started developing the concepts around Smart Dental after his father (a dentist) diagnosed a dental issue from a picture Mark sent him while studying Nanotechnology at Trinity College, Dublin.

If it was possible to accurately make a diagnosis from an iPhone picture, what could be possible if IoT, AI, and Data Analytics could also be applied? Toothpic now numbers around 50 employees in Brooklyn (HQ) and Dublin, counts Mark Zuckerburg's father as a senior advisor, and works with a number of the major insurers in the US (inc Blue Cross) and oral care providers (inc. Phillips).

Mark joins me on the podcast to talk about the rise of smart dental for patients, making dental practices dental secure and the role of technology in the evolution of dental insurance polices.