- Hello everyone.
I'm Brian Zimmerman, a VP client, content
and Strategy at Becker's Healthcare.
Thank you for tuning into the Becker's Healthcare podcast.
Today's conversation.
I am joined by Jonathan Kaufman,
chief Marketing Officer at Sage Dental.
Jonathan, thank you so much for being here today.
- Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
- So, and, and to get us started here,
can you just introduce yourself, uh, share,
share a a bit about your, your, what you're doing
as Chief Marketing Officer at Sage Dental and,
and a bit about Sage Dental as well,
so listeners can really appreciate your perspective here.
- Yeah, of course. Uh, my name's John Kaufman.
I'm the Chief Marketing Officer of Sage.
I've been here for about five years.
Been in the dental space for about 10.
Served as Chief marketing officer at another DSO,
um, in Texas.
Before that, I mean, my, my focus at SAGE is
both marketing strategy,
but also technology, um, technology application, which is,
you know, kind of apropos to the, the topic
that we're discussing.
Um, Sage Dental is, uh, just under 120 dental practices.
We've grown in the last three years from 60.
So we've actually doubled in size in, uh, three years, just,
uh, as we got outta Covid.
You know, we are a consistently branded DSO organization,
so all of our practices are Sage Dental.
Um, there are a few that are not, and that's simply
because we've just completed, uh, an acquisition
and they're, they're not quite rebranded yet.
Um, but we, we don't just kind of brand everything the same.
Um, everything is on a consistent platform,
gives us consistency in technology
and messaging, um, in, uh,
patient experience, whatever it might be.
And, you know, we like to think of ourselves
as very tech forward in terms of the, uh,
the patient experience.
And we've got a, a great, uh, set of providers that offer,
you know, general hygiene, specialty, endo, ortho,
oral surgery, uh, perio, pedo, you name it.
Um, so just, I, I like to think of ourselves
as a tech Ford very well-rounded all dentistry in one
place, uh, organization.
- Perfect. It's great background for folks
that help understand, especially
around this technology components,
which we are gonna dig into quite a bit today.
And, and, and specifically wanna begin here
by really focusing on artificial intelligence.
So of course, um,
if you're having a conversation about technology
and healthcare today, artificial intelligence
is, is definitely coming up.
And, uh, curious to how, how you would describe
how you're seeing ai, this AI trend sort
of play out in the dental space specifically?
- Yeah, I mean the AI question, it's such a, a,
a loaded descriptor 'cause so much is just not ai, right?
So much is augmented reality,
and I don't think it's just in the dental space
that you see that topic coming up and,
and not just in healthcare.
I mean, I don't think you can have a conversation
with anyone these days without talking about chat GPT
or using the, the term
- Ai.
That is fair. But it's certainly fair. Yes.
- Um, but how's it playing out in the dental space?
I mean, it's playing out fragmented is how it's playing out.
So I think the most developed type
of AI that is being utilized most broadly right now
is likely, you know, diagnostics from radiographs, right?
So not a new technology,
but a new technology as it applies to dentistry, right?
The ability to scan a, a huge volume
of patient x-rays
and provide insights to, you know, what type of issues
that that patient, uh, has with their teeth.
It's interesting because the technology is,
that is evolving so rapidly, right?
I mean, if you think about, you know,
Google's been using this kind of, um, image automation and
and image AI for a long time, so of other vendors,
but it's really being applied to dentistry.
And I think while the technology itself is not new,
its application to dentistry is new
and it's the most broadly adopted,
and now it's, you know, it's being iterated, right?
So how can we bring those tentacles of, of radiograph, um,
diagnostics into, um, insur, you know,
automating insurance claims or communicating to patients.
So I think, you know, that's,
that's the biggest trend I've seen.
I think we've seen, you know, companies like Pearl Nvidia
and, and others that are kind of trailblazing that path.
Um, you know,
earlier on it was kind of the dental monitoring.
I think they go by dental mind now, um, where it was a lot
of increased convenience for patients by looking at, uh,
patient images from home
for ortho cases using dental monitoring
or visualizing a new smile.
But I'm seeing a lot more also pop up around a lot
of different, uh, vendors and how they,
or, uh, you know, it, it may not be a marketing vendor,
it may be a, um, a clinical vendor that is starting to adapt
that to, okay, how can we better communicate to the patient?
How can we turn some of the components
of this radiographic identification
or treatment design into kind of marketing tools
and conversion tools and other things.
So I think that's probably the biggest kind of broadly, um,
adopted trend right now.
I think we'll see other things, more robotic automation.
Um, we just met with a group that's doing, um,
robotic implant implementation, and it's a bad analogy,
but it's, it's similar to, uh,
kinda laparoscopic surgery except without the surgeon
actually, you know, doing the,
the laparoscopic type surgery.
It's, it's truly robotic.
And I think that's few years away in terms of, um,
how AI will define that.
But it's definitely, there's some other things coming.
- Yeah, certainly. And, and,
and you really nailed down on sort of a lot of, some of the,
um, the ways that AI can change some of the
clinical elements of dentistry.
Um, and it certainly alluded to also the way some of
that is then going to, um, trickle into or affect
and be used in, in marketing.
So I, I guess I want to ask you what other opportunities
or challenges are coming up around AI in, in,
in the dental industry, um,
and thinking here specifically about sort of
that marketing component that you, you sort of alluded
to in in your last answer there,
because of course the, there's a lot of talk broadly about
how AI's going transform many industries.
And, uh, thinking about the marketing in the broadest sense,
there's a lot of talk about how AI is
going to transform marketing.
So curious to hear your take on, on the opportunities
and challenges in this space, um, in, in terms
of AI marketing in, in the dental industry,
and anything else you you wanna highlight
and any other challenges or opportunities
you wanna flag for listeners?
- Yeah, I mean, that, that's a big question, right?
So I think the first part of it is challenges.
I think, I think the biggest challenge for its application
and clinical is both the adoption from the providers, right?
Getting a provider trained
and comfortable with something that they've,
they've perhaps never used or had to rely on for many years.
Um, and I think the second part
of the challenge is the fragmentation i, I kind
of talked about earlier, right?
Um, it's, it's, there's a lot of fragmented, um, tools.
And in dentistry, I think many of your listeners will,
will agree, you know, there's a lot
of fragmented tools not in ai, right?
A lot of our practice management systems, a lot of our, um,
supply systems, what, whatever it might be, right?
Um, there's a lot of fragmentation.
Um, you know, I think dentistry represents about 3%
of the total healthcare market.
So a lot of that investment in systems is done outside
of the dental, um, the, the dental vertical, if you will.
So I think part of the challenge is, um, is A,
getting the provider to adopt it,
and b um,
once the new system is out, how do you then implement
that seamlessly into the variety
of fragmented practice management systems, um,
and other tools that are out there?
So I think, um, I think that's probably right now the,
the biggest hurdle, um, I think the, the kind
of the tertiary hurdle around that is patients, right?
Um, how comfortable are patients with, um, these types
of technologies leaning on these types of technologies?
We've got several, you know, studies that we've looked at
that show that, you know, patients expect it.
Then we've got several that show
that patients could care less, right?
And so I think that there's, um,
the adoption phase I think is going
to take a little bit more time from the patient side.
Um, so I think, I think those are the, the big, um,
the big hurdles from a clinical side.
Now to your second question, in terms of marketing, um, I,
I'm gonna stick to like, dental specific marketing
because if I go outside of that realm, I'm gonna, you know,
be vomiting up the chat GPTs and,
and all these other kind of tools, um, that are out there.
I think a good example though is to use chat GPT.
So I think that for those people that have used chat, GPT
or other types of tools, they'll note that, you know,
if you write, uh, some sort of prose
or email or whatever, right?
And you, you give it a lot of bullet points and directions,
and you input that into chat GPT, it's going to output
for you, you know, the tone, um, the, the content,
the substance, it's just gonna clean
it up and make it sound better.
And, and that's great.
If you just say, you know, to chat GPT without any context,
write me an email, you know, as a response to
this email I got from this person.
You know, it, it may have all the information,
but it doesn't have the context or, um, you know, the tone
and, and it can, it can seem constructed, right?
And I think that applies to where marketing is
with AI right now in terms of the dental space, which is
that, um, you, you gotta be really careful
not to utilize some of these marketing tools as the
complete solution set,
but like the clinical side as an augment to, um, you know,
the original diagnosis, the original di uh, marketing plan
or marketing message
or whatever, it's, I think that the,
the innovations are gonna come from, i,
I think the greatest innovations
for the marketing side using AI are going to come
again, focused on dental.
They're gonna come from the use of these tool sets
and how these tool sets can, um, allow you
to better communicate with your patient.
So let's just use clinical diagnostics, right?
If I've got three years of radiographs from a patient
and that patient has consistently, um,
or we've seen consistent deterioration in, you know, part
of their mouth or, or one of their teeth
or whatever it might be, right?
And they've, they've just, you know, always kind
of taken the, the insurance provided cleaning
or whatever it might be, right?
I think the, the evolution for marketing is going to be to
have that so that you can, you can utilize
that in an automated fashion to communicate to the patient
with education to say, look, you're, you're kind of
not wanting to do this.
I'm making this up, but thousand dollar crown, right?
Which you need if you don't do that, right?
Based on the progression of the deterioration, you know,
this is gonna be an extraction in implant in
two years, right?
And so that's gonna be a $5,000 expense.
So, you know, it's gonna be important that you address this
and you address this now.
And I think we're not, we're nowhere near being able to do
that with, with automation sophistication yet.
But I think that that's where things get exciting.
I also think
that things will get exciting just on the visual side, and,
and they're already starting to a bit where
you can essentially say to your patient, you know,
what smile do you want?
What do you want this to look like? Right?
And they can visualize that,
and that allows patients to actually say, oh, this is
where I can be, and this is the treatment plan
that will essentially get me, um, get me to that place.
So, um, you know,
and then there's other stuff in terms of, you know,
patient communication as it relates
to phone calls or chat, right?
I mean, we've all spent the time, uh, you know, whether
and not to, you know, say anything bad about at and t,
but we've all, we've all gone on the robocall with at
and t where, you know, we're going through the IVR system
and listening to their automated voice.
I think, I think there's some exciting things coming in
terms of, uh, actually human interaction
or human-like interaction with phone calls
and, um, appointment setting and chat bots
and things like that that just allow you to do so much more,
um, within a healthcare sphere that's, you know,
HIPAA compliant and PCI come all these things
that you need with healthcare.
And I think those are, those are the exciting things.
And of course, there's the other ones where, you know,
you can ideate some creative messaging through chat GPT,
but, um, that, that's kind of where I think, um,
there's some excitement
and there's some, some innovation happening.
And that is, that is by the way, a, um,
a very long answer, to your question,
- .
Well, it, it was a very big question as,
as you noted at the top,
but I think you, you navigated def deftly, um, the,
I wanna focus in more on the, on the,
on the patient again here, as you sort of alluded to,
in a lot of ways, this could affect a patient in terms
of education and communication.
Um, can, can you share anything else about
how you anticipate this, the application of AI will,
will affect the patient, any other things to share there?
And then of course, if it affects the patient, it stands
to reason like your, the example you gave about the crown,
the crown, it stands to reason
that if you're education educating patients more about this
sort of thing, it's gonna have, you know, uh, implications
for operational and business outcomes as well.
So can, can you expand on that a little bit and, and,
and share any examples or, or,
or specific ideas, um, that, that might help illustrate it
for, for listeners?
- Yeah, I mean, I can, I can go back to the example I gave
of where I think marketing communications will go, which is
what we're actually seeing in real life application
with direct contact with the patient, right?
So, uh, I have, gosh, probably now a thousand examples,
maybe more of practices where, um,
they've had a patient come in,
they've been a repeat patient,
and they've said, you know, I just want my cleaning, right?
I want my cleaning, I want my, you know, whatever they need.
And, you know, or they come in
and they say, I just want a filling, right?
I mean, you know, I don't think you walk in
and go, I, you know, I would just like
surgery on my kidneys, right?
But that, that happens in dentistry, right?
And, you know, by use of the ai, right?
By pulling up the, um, the annotated radiograph
and showing the progression, we've been able to say, Hey,
I know that's what you think you want,
but here's what you actually need and here's why.
And let me show you exactly what this looks like.
And hey, don't take my word for it,
even though I hope you take my word for it.
I'm a, I'm a licensed clinician doing this a long time,
but here is, you know, kind
of a third party objective reality of what's going on there
and educating them that, Hey, you, you actually need this
and you need this now.
And I, I recognize that that is, you know, it's expensive,
but it's something you need to have done.
And, um, we have seen over and over and over
and over again, examples
of us utilizing those technologies in our practices
and being able to educate parent or educate patients,
and I don't wanna say convert them,
although that is the business
and operational reality, right?
It is converting them into revenue, but it is not fabricated
or push revenue, right?
It is objective reality of, you know, this is
what you need, right?
It you, you don't go in with a, you know, with a, uh,
a knife wound on your arm
and say, you know, I would just like a bandaid, right?
I mean, there, there's an objective reality
to that that needs to be fixed.
And I think that that's been coming to dentistry and,
and we have seen that over and over
and over again, that by showing them that kind
of third party objectivity, it allows them to feel educated,
build trust, and convert, um,
into the treatment that they need.
And that delivery of, of true patient care, right?
Educated patient care, um, does have a business
and an operational impact,
because at the end of the day, it does increase revenue,
it does increase productivity.
It, it does all these things
that you do want out of a business, right?
Um, but that also are in the best interest of the patient.
- Yeah. And, and Jonathan, we've, we've covered a,
a good bit of ground and you've talked a a lot about what's
exci, the exciting stuff that that's happening with, with AI
and dentistry, and what could, what could potentially be
around the horizon that could a, as you pointed out,
benefit patients, benefit dental organizations.
Thinking about the next five to 10 years here,
is there anything else that excites you
that you wanna note for, for listeners?
Or if there is, is there anything you wanna revisit
reemphasize for folks as we come to,
to a close here in a bit?
- A bit? I think the biggest thing that I can say is
that things are changing so rapidly every day.
That predicting where we're gonna be in five
to 10 years is almost impossible.
And I'll give you an example. We are working on a project,
um, with, uh, with another, uh, group and vendor,
and we did a demo of it about six months ago,
and it's an AI-based product,
and it was incredible when we saw it, the work we had done
that others had done, it was like, wow, this is incredible.
And I just had a meeting earlier this week
with the same group on the same exact product,
and we were kind of laughing
because the new, the new version is
so much better than the one we thought was
amazing six months ago.
And what was most hilarious about that is
that everything we used to create the new version
wasn't even invented
or available six months ago when we created the old version.
And so that gives you a sense of
how rapidly things are changing.
So I can't predict for you the next three weeks,
let alone the next five to 10 years.
I, I really have no idea where,
I mean, you can think up a thousand use cases for
where IAC could go,
but you've gotta have somebody that is gonna implement it
and operationalize it in a way that works with a variety
of different fragmented systems and, and practices.
And you've gotta, um, do that in a way
where it's not too early for patient adoption, right?
That the, the patient is ready for that type of stair step.
Um, and you know, I, I think this is an incredible time.
I think the word AI just generally gets way
too overused, right?
AI is a really specific thing,
and everything's kind of been categorized
into this AI bucket.
And in reality, a lot of it is just a, you know, kind
of a language model and some, some augmented reality
or some robotic process automation.
But, um, I think true ai
and what can be done with that, um, in the next five,
10 years is just, I,
I couldn't even I couldn't even
forecast it for you if I tried.
- Yeah, no, I mean, that's a great point.
I, I, I think if I think back
to maybe there's some conversations in might have had about,
um, AI or,
or technology, I guess, in, in any space in that
pr like maybe two weeks prior to the launch of, of chat GPT
or like the big embrace, like the right,
that those whole conversations are kind of like, uh,
completely changed after that moment.
So who knows what could, what could happen in the next few
weeks could, so something could come out
that completely changes the game.
I, I, I think to your point,
having some few humility when we get into forecasting
conversations is necessary.
- I, I totally agree.
- Yeah. Yeah. Well, uh, Jonathan, it's been a real treat to,
to have you on and talk through this with you today.
Um, any closing thoughts?
Any final words you wanna share
with our listeners before we sign off?
- No, I mean, I think, I think the biggest thing is don't be
afraid to dip your toe in the water, right?
Even if it is, start with chat, chat GPT,
because this is not going away, right?
This is not, not an eight track tape
that's gonna revolutionize the world, right?
This is, I mean, this is the iPhone, this is the internet.
This is, um, these are these things that you, if you just,
if you don't embrace them, you will be left
behind in the dust by a long shot.
Um, I can tell you that our senior leaders are all taking,
you know, advanced classes, you know,
provided by the Harvards and the Penns
and the Stanfords of the world in ai.
You know, they offer these kind of three month classes just
so that we're not, you know, we,
we're not gonna be the ones developing the ai right?
But we have to know and understand what this is
and dip the toe in the water and really be pursuing it.
Because I think if you don't,
you're gonna be simply left behind.
- Yeah. You, you, you don't wanna be caught flat-footed when
the next thing really comes out that, that, that's changed.
You want to have some sort of, uh, ability around this stuff
and knowledge so you can adopt it, right?
- Yeah. This is not a fad. Yeah. Right, right.
This is not a fad.
- Well, Jonathan, once again, thank you
so much for coming on the podcast.
- Uh, my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me, Brian.
- Yep. And also want to, of course,
thank our podcast sponsor Sage Dental.
You continue to more podcasts from Becker's Healthcare
by visiting our podcast page at becker's podcasts.com.
I.