Artificial intelligence is beginning to affect all aspects of medical care. For example, a Startup based in Boston called Videahealth is associated with large dental service organizations such as Heartland Dental to advance the dental diagnosis of precision and attention with work flow tools generated by AI and management cycle management solutions. Founder and CEO Florian Hillen recently spoke with Health innovation on the potential to apply AI to dental care.
Released in 2022, Videahealth recently raised $ 40 million in a round of financing in excess subscription directed by Emily Melton, co -founder and partner manager of Threshold Ventures, with the participation of Avenir Ventures, Bam Ventures and existing investors Spark Capital, Zetta Venture Partners and Pillar VC. Videahealth says that its platform with AI is used by dental professionals from North America to analyze millions of patients annually, supporting doctors in the identification and treatment of critical dental conditions.
Videahealth collaborates with larger dental service organizations (DSO) in North America, including Dental Heartland in the United States and Dentalcorp in Canada. More than 40,000 dental professionals worldwide use the Videahealth AI platform, the company said.
Before founding Videahealth, Hillen made periods in Eko Health, which created a digital stethoscope, as well as in McKinsey consulting, before studying the AI link and medical care at MIT.
Health innovation: could you talk about how this company came to find?
Hillen: Dentistry is a really excellent market in which it has very innovative dentists who try to rely on technology to overcome many other challenges they have at this time, such as staff scarcity. I founded this company just outside the MIT, right? I looked on Google Maps for dentists near the MIT, and entered each office and asked them if they wanted to help me build this. Very early, he had what he would call design partners. Interestingly, I probably know all the dentists in Cambridge. But now we have more than 100 dentists on the payroll.
We built an algorithm and made the dental practices of early adoption use it and make them inform about what they liked and what they did not like. In addition, we could measure from the beginning if they can really increase their income. This is how I could raise my first round of seeds, which was $ 1 million. Then, with that seed round, I could move from that early conceptual algorithm to build software and make an adequate pilot. The pilot’s result was so good that I could lift my next round.
HCI: How your solution AI optimizes workflow and leads to greater income growth for dentists?
Hillen: When you go to a dentist, they take radiographs, and then the dentist could enter and tell you: ‘Hey, do you see this gray stain in this tooth on the radiography? You need a $ 2,000 crown. Ideally, you would program it, but often people think I don’t know if I need that. They say: ‘Don’t allow me to program this right now. Let me think about it. And then they can call another dentist and ask for a second opinion. That is really common in dentistry. In fact, dentistry is one of the markets with most second opinions.
Now with Videahealth, when you go to the dentist, they take the radiographs, and then our platform automatically analyze the radiographs and show you in your radiographs all diseases based on algorithms approved by the FDA, which have trained in hundreds of millions of dental X -rays. So it is almost like the power of 100 dentists who look over the dentist’s shoulder. So this time, they don’t say: ‘Hey, you need a periodontal job.’ They show you in more detail your loss of bone in red, yellow and green. It is really a great communication tool of the patient, as well as supports dental doctors so that nothing is lost. It is a proposal to win. The patient wins because he receives the right treatment before and does not delay treatment. Maybe they can make a $ 200 filling from time to time, it never becomes a $ 2,000 crown, but the dentist also earns more money.
HCI: You have this new financing round. What are some of the things that will allow the company to do?
Hillen: The first thing is that we will duplicate in terms of focusing on our customers, working with the dental services organization and obtaining more products to more people and increasing customer success, just ensuring that we can serve them well. The second thing is that we are also doubling our associations. We have a great association with Henry Schein, bringing the dental education market.
We will also innovate and launch many new products. Law one was about the clinic, which we just discussed, which ensures that patients receive the right treatment at the right time. The second act, which we are building now based on financing, is to automate as many administrative processes as possible in the dental office to allow the dentist to spend more time doing what they love to do, and that is to be together with the patient. Therefore, we are working on a lot to automate many workflows (programming, documentation, layout, whatever, we will automate it.
