The Future of Dentistry Powered by AI

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In this day and age, you must live under a rock if you haven’t heard about AI. That said, many dentists seem to forget about Dental AI. Ophir Tanz is the CEO of Pearl, a company that is at the forefront of Dental AI. Dr. Glenn Vo has some mutual friends who work for Ophir’s company, and he respects their co-founder—a fellow dentist—very much.Glenn was pumped to have Ophir on for this week’s episode of the Nifty Thrifty Podcast, especially because he knows that Ophir’s heart is in the game. AI geek has meaningful connections in the dental world.There are so many different types of AI from pattern recognition to text-oriented software.Pearl specializes in a subfield of AI called computer vision, which basically teaches computers to really see and interpret the world in the same way humans do. No matter how good of a dentist you may be, you’re a human—and humans make mistakes. Dentists carry a massive burden as they constantly hustle and bustle to run their business, issue treatment, read radiographs, and more.Pearl is best known for being able to look at dental radiography of various types and identify disease, existing restorations, and natural anatomy at levels that are both extremely accurate and consistent. Specifically, Pearl utilizes the first comprehensive AI-power real-time radiologic platform—and they call it “Second Opinion.” Second Opinion is intended to identify areas of interest where disease may exist and point that out to the doctor. The name is very intentional; they’re not looking to take any autonomy away from practitioners. Pearl also offers another tool called “Practice Intelligence.” Practice Intelligence integrates with your current imaging systems and practice management software to offer specific insights about your patient population, help you plan for each day to optimize efficiencies, front office assistance, and more.Pearl’s Second Opinion is also FDA approved. In fact, it’s the first and only chairside FDA-cleared radiologic detection aid. For context, the only other Dental AI that can compete with Pearl is only authorized for patients who are 22 years or older.Ophir’s story actually comes full circle: his father was a dentist. Naturally, then, he grew up in a dental office environment. But Ophir decided not to go into dentistry. He pursued engineering and computer science.Ophir made a passion for being a serial entrepreneur and while he’s started up a number of companies, the common thread has always been their relation to AI.Thus, Ophir has been focused on computer vision AI for at least 17 years. His career has consisted of applying this technology to different areas in ways that can generate better real-world outcomes.Ophir saw the opportunity to continue to apply this technology across a wide spectrum of categories. He launched some other divisions, one being a healthcare-oriented effort.That healthcare-oriented effort goes all the way back to 2015, and Ophir decided to settle on dental for a variety of reasons. His reasoning went beyond having previous exposure to the dental industry; As the years went on, Ophir and his team at Peal did lots of research and saw a chance to make a big impact on humanity—larger than his current company was making.His current company was mostly in the media space, and he had been running it for 11 and a half years, but he felt his calling and stepped down as CEO. Thus, in 2019, he became the man-in-charge at Pearl.Ophir hasn’t looked back since; Pearl is his favorite company he’s ever run. He credits his fondness for Pearl to the impact he sees their technology making on a daily basis to help patients get the care they need, as well as help, improve the practitioner experience.Learn about:How does Pearl unburden the practitioner so they can perform dentistry at an elevated standard of care?What makes Pearl different from the other Dental AI companies?And more!

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