The future is now

Are robots better at building trust?

Author

Dr Rosemary Morgan
April 23, 2023

The future is now

“No doubt that AI will be having an impact on your work life soon, check this out.. Pearl AI

Reading radiographs accurately can be difficult at times and one has to constantly recalibrate oneself to check your findings clinically with what you have seen on the radiograph.

Having technology to assist with this will be great. Maybe the danger is if there is a complete reliance on the AI. I suppose there would need to be a period of adjustment to find the sweet spot.” Turns out that it’s more creative copywriting rather than a robot dentist, but it represents a shift in our thinking about what constitutes an examination and also gives us insight into how some of our patients may view how they access healthcare.

I wrote this a couple of weeks ago as worked on some ideas for this newsletter.

Yesterday, this advert popped up in my Twitter feed. It’s pretty interesting.

Certainly, it looks like this practice may be using software such as Pearl AI to assist with reading of their images. I think that’s pretty great. Maybe we all should be doing that?

I, for one, regularly send images to a Dental Radiologist for a second opinion, whether its a PA, OPG or CBCT. It’s helpful, educative and reassuring that I have done right by the patient. Even if it costs me a little; for me it’s worthwhile.

What I found more interesting was the copy on the ad. This is appealing to a specific type of patient.

Call the shots with confidence.

Thorough, personalised analysis with 3D scans, X-rays and detailed photographs sent to your phone. Get a better understanding of your teeth from our independent diagnostic clinic using AI, human reviewers and a dentist.
20 minutes is all you need to get a comprehensive dental snapshot of your oral health. It's a dental check-up, upgraded.

know.dental

The ad speaks of empowerment and taking contol. The AI is serving to validate the judgement of the human. “You can trust this dentist as AI is helping them”.

There’s no mention of comprehensive history taking, goals for their oral health, desires or getting to know you as a person. The report is sent direct to your phone.

I’m sure there’s questionnaires that capture some of this information along with discussions/ follow up.

This advert is appealing to the patients who don’t like to talk on the phone, that are more comfortable with conversing via text. These are the patients that prefer to book online rather than over the phone. They are short of time.

Maybe for a person with good teeth, not a filling in their mouth, straight teeth and no concnerns, this is all they need.

I know that there are any number of new patients that I see that fit these criteria and present as low risk.

Its easy to be critical of this type of process as it de-personalises the interaction and really removes the relationship from the patient/ clincian partnership.

As dentists, we are taught that we need to build trust and are taught how to do this. This advert challenges us. Maybe there’s a whole bunch of people out there that don’t want a relationship with a dentist and maybe that in fact keeps them away? Maybe they don’t trust us without the back up of a robot.

Let’s look big picture.

This sort of practice/ system can help improve access to care in remote or regional areas as a screening tool. It can help workforce issues in public or private settings.

So well done know.dental for showing us that the future is now. We need to learn, as a profession, how to harness AI for the benefit of our patients and more importantly for those that aren’t our patients; remember the 44% from last week.

“Innovation is the ability to see changes as an opportunity rather than a threat”

Steve Jobs

Thank you for reading and please share with a dental friend

Rosie

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