Hello everyone. I am Ryan Mohamed.
She her pronouns with Becker's Hospital Reveal.
Thank you for tuning in to the Becker's Healthcare podcast series.
Today I'm pleased to be joined by Dr. Cindy Work,
senior Vice President and Chief Clinical Officer at Sage Dental. Dr.
Rorick, thank you so much for joining us today. How are you?
I'm good. I'm good, Mariah. Thank you for having me.
It's always a pleasure to talk with the Becker's team.
Of course. I'm so happy to have you on today. Um,
and before we dive into our conversation,
could you please introduce yourself and tell our listeners a little bit more
about your background?
Sure, of course. So again, Dr. Cindy Rourke and, um,
grew up in Tennessee and ended up going to dental school in Boston.
And I ended up, like most people with dental school, um,
practicing up in the area where I went to school.
So I stayed up in the northeast, practiced for about seven years,
and then I moved to Florida and I thought I'd only do this do d s o thing for
about a year. And that was probably 20 plus years ago. So, um,
it turns out that I've done private practice and really enjoyed that and I've,
I've lived in D S O land for quite a while, but I did divert for a, um,
a short period of time to Vanderbilt and, um,
helped rebuild their multi-specialty dental clinic and work on their medical
school staff. So lots of diverse, uh, experiences to bring to the table.
Yes, absolutely. And thank you so much for sharing that. Uh,
with that we can dive right into our conversation today. So, Dr.
As we are still in the beginning stages of 2023, um,
the district continues to evolve rapidly into this new year.
Can you share an overview of 2023 trends and where you think industry
is now?
Oh, sure. Of course. AI pretty much is everywhere.
It has exploded. And what's very interesting about that is, you know,
prior to the pandemic, people wouldn't touch AI components. It was, you know,
just a bad movie on Netflix or something like that, you know,
nobody really understood it, didn't know what it could do. And, um,
and really post pandemic and on into now you have just seen an absolute
explosion of AI-based products and services for dentistry.
And I'll explain more about that in a second, but, um, if you think about it,
just even when you open the news today, chat, g p t is everywhere.
I think they,
the average human really does have some sort of concept of where AI is and
what it can do,
whereas before it was a little scary to people and they weren't really sure what
to expect. Now we actually have, um,
patients and members of the public who are aware of AI and what it can do.
So that's really, to me, as I see 2023 and where we're headed, I,
it's all about ai, it's everywhere, it's ubiquitous, but, um,
but more specifically where I see it penetrating first and mo most deeply,
I guess I would say, uh,
it would be computer vision programs and those would be the,
the Pearl AI to look, look at your X-rays and annotate them, um,
overjet, denti, ai, all these, um, tools.
They are versions of computer vision, AI products. And, um,
I think they're fantastic because what they do, and you can stop me, Mariah,
at any point, but, um, what I wanted to say is, is really for a patient,
you have no idea how amazing this really is because your x-rays now
almost will have a single version of the truth.
So you don't have that situation where you go to the dentist in Seattle and you
get a completely different diagnosis than you get when you go in Louisville,
Kentucky. Right. You, you want, if it's decay,
it should be decay in whatever state, right?
But that's not the way dentistry has traditionally been.
So now we have this automated tool that goes ahead and puts bone loss,
puts decay, it reads something like, I mean, depending on the, um,
the product anywhere from 300 to 3000 pixels is the degree of
sensitivity, whereas the human eye is like 35, 40 pixels.
So clearly this can do something we can't and they can do it better and it can
come up with a standard. So for me, it's, it's all about AI in 23,
but I do have a few.
More. Okay. Yeah, no, that's perfect.
AI is definitely becoming the next best, uh, best thing. Um,
and I wanna thank you so much for sharing that insight and I never wanna stop an
expert from speaking on their focus . No.
But also on the same topic of digital Street evolving, um,
digital twins in Digital Street has now emerged. Um,
where do you see digital twins future in the digital space, if you could say?
Oh, absolutely. I think, um,
I would see digital twins first penetrating in the kind of the dental
school arena. And if you think about it, at least right now,
dentistry is a psychomotor skill. So you can learn everything, you know,
with your brain,
but then you've gotta learn it with your hands and be able to reproduce it.
And that's something completely different from, for instance, what a GP in, uh,
medicine would do, right? Um, so you're doing the, the diagnostic side,
but you're also the surgeon and you have to get your hands there.
So if you think about a digital twin and that whole metaverse, you know,
now you have the ability to train people with real hepatic in a real
immersive environment and their hands actually get the skills they're supposed
to get as you learn how to do these things. So I see it in,
um, in terms of dental schools for sure. I see it in terms of advanced training,
for instance, um, you know, I, I work with, and for, uh,
D S O we have about a hundred practices and probably the most common question I
get as we're looking to bring a new doctor on board would be,
can I place implants? And, you know, my first thought is always like, oh,
I don't know, can you place implants? But I, but I'm joking.
My point is dental schools don't really, um, for undergrads at least,
don't really allow for a lot of hands-on implant placement,
if any at all. Some, some allow none and most allow none at this point.
But anyway, so, so people have an interest in doing it,
but we aren't really taught how to do it at school.
And so you've got this big gap, and I don't want people practicing on,
on sh patient, I want you to know what you're doing.
Well now I've got the opportunity to deploy this metaverse kind of ai,
um,
tool where they can actually get time on task and real hands on and learn to do
that in an immersive environment so that when they walk into the patient's
mouth, it's not the first time they're trying it that way. So for me,
I think it's just got an amazing applicability to the training,
the hands-on training side.
Yeah, those are really good points that you brought up.
And dentistry has continued to catch up to other industries, which is fantastic.
Um, however,
are there any areas of opportunity you still see in industry for growth?
Oh, for sure. Um, probably the,
the biggest thing that I see is, um,
it surprises me that a lot of insurance carriers, some of the big ones,
and I'm not gonna name names because they don't deserve it, but, um, there,
there are some huge industries that are still almost completely paper-based
and in, you know, 2023, that's just preposterous,
right? You can't access, um,
claims information or adjudication or anything like that. And so I,
I ca hate to keep our harping on ai, but um,
they developed a lot of these computer vision tools for the insurance industry.
And what that means is if I'm using it to annotate x-rays,
if I'm using it in my clinical office within the next six months,
I'm gonna be able to auto adjudicate my claims because I'm submitting an
X-ray real time and it's being approved real time, um, by the carrier.
So this,
this shutting down that timeline between when you file a claim and when you get
paid when it's approved and knowing for a patient that it's either covered or
not covered, I think those are really important things. Um,
just from the business standpoint, not from uh, the patient care standpoint,
but from just a patient behavior and experience,
it's really important because the number one thing you see patients complain
about at a dentist would be, uh, billing issues, right?
And that's because quite often you do the work and then you send it off to the
carrier and it may or may not get covered or it may get downgraded,
all those things. But now with ai,
we can link the patient's plan directly with most of the carriers.
We can submit this x-ray so we can know real time what they will and will not
cover. So from a patient transparency standpoint,
that's really key to a great experience that no surprises bill 30 days later
kind of thing. Um, I,
I think that is an area where we really have to step up,
up because the technology's there and,
and there are again are some carriers that are huge that have,
have fallen behind, and I think they have to catch up. That's,
that's where we really have to step up to the plate. Um,
secondarily I would say, uh,
it would have to be in really, I don't care what system they use, but,
but getting a,
an AI penetration on the computer vision side where decay is
standard, um, you know,
that's really important for the industry because patient trust is super
important and if they think they get different diagnosis everywhere,
they'll continue to shop. And we don't want that.
Yes, absolutely. And Doctor,
as a patient who is always frustrated with billing with
healthcare, that is great that you brought that up.
It's horrible.
It, it really is.
And it can make someone not want to get healthcare when everyone really does
need to go. Right. Um, but but before I let you go,
would you happen to have any closing thoughts for our listeners?
Well, I do. I was gonna say there are, it, I, I said ai, you know,
has exploded and it has, there are actually a couple of other things,
I think maybe two to watch out for,
for 2023 because I'm seeing an explosion of two different things.
One would be 3D printing, no question about it. Um,
and in the pa you know, technologies like that have always been around,
but now what's happening is you're combining the 3D printing with some AI
technologies so that,
that when these dentures or braces or things pop out,
they're, um, a finished product.
Either the doctor doesn't have to sit there and stain or glaze or polish or
any of those things. And so they've,
I I wanna call it de-skilling it such that if I'm really just
pressing a button and this filling is coming out or these dentures are coming
out, that's so easy that almost anyone would adopt. Right?
And I think we're getting to a tipping point where a lot of 3D printing will
come into play. That's one. Um, secondarily,
I would definitely look out for all kinds of connected devices now.
And by that I mean, you know,
maybe test your bacterial levels of your perio at home,
those kinds of different things that can be done,
I think from a public health standpoint, those are pretty cool. Um,
and the last comment I have for you, Mariah,
is actually pretty interesting to me. Um,
I was actually on the phone about a week and a half ago with a company in
France, and they, um, are try, you know,
getting ready to go through f d a approval on an autonomous robotic,
um, machine where you use your scans and you merge it with a C B C T
and then, um,
you tell the robot what to do and it does the work for
you. And I literally,
it just cracks me up because it's like years and years ago,
no one thought self-driving cars would ever be a thing,
and they're edging in there.
I don't think anyone ever thought a robot could do the work of a dentist, right?
But I assure you, at some point they will be, they'll use our brains,
but they won't use our hands. Um, so that's really the fascinating stuff.
I think where dentistry's headed is mind blowing.
Yes. That definitely seems exciting and almost nerve wracking at the same time.
Exactly. I know. But yeah,
I love where the future is headed and I wanna thank you so much for those final
thoughts, doctor, and thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
Of course. It's been a pleasure speaking with you.
And I'll also like to thank our podcast sponsor Sage Dental,
and you can tune into more podcasts for Becker's Healthcare by visiting our
podcast page at becker's podcast.com. Thank you again, doctor.
Thank you. You guys have a great day. Appreciate it.