Remote monitoring
Island, rural – even urban – practices and their patients are set to benefit from a new AI-powered technology
Imagine being able to monitor your patients’ orthodontic treatment remotely. Island communities in Scotland are now benefitting from a technology that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to enable remote monitoring of orthodontic treatments, writes William Peakin.
Its creators say that technology improves the quality of care, the patient experience and practice efficiency. Practices in urban areas are now also exploring whether the technology could help them increase efficiency, boost capacity, manage staff shortages and tackle waiting lists.
Orthodontists based in Dundee currently fly to the island to see patients
Earlier this year, members of DentalMonitoring – the company behind the technology – travelled to the Shetland Islands to train the team at Brae Dental Health Centre in its use and onboard their first 100 patients. Previously, the NHS has provided orthodontics on Shetland through this NHS dental practice, despite having no orthodontists living on the island. The clinic opens on certain weekends and orthodontists based in Dundee fly to the island to see patients.
NHS Shetland and DentalMonitoring first started discussing the possibility of working together in the autumn of last year and it was clear there were opportunities to use the technology to help tackle some of the challenges faced in providing orthodontics on the island. It was not only a case of the orthodontists needing to get to Shetland, but also patients living on the isles of Unst and Yell having to travel by ferry to attend their orthodontic appointments.
Overall, the aim was to offer patients a more convenient option, to create a more robust orthodontic service for the islands – by helping to reduce the strain placed on the orthodontists who regularly give up their weekends to work on Shetland – and improve treatment through weekly monitoring of patients.
DentalMonitoring was created by Philippe Salah, who graduated from the École Polytechnique in Paris with a PhD in Biophysics. He fell in love with orthodontics after partnering with an orthodontist to build Harmony, a company that made custom lingual treatments with a fully digital workflow. By 2014, Philippe had recognised that AI was the next frontier in medical care, and so he brought together a team of engineers and orthodontists to develop DentalMonitoring.
The development of its AI-powered platform began with a focus on teaching the AI to analyse intraoral images and identify different patient issues across all orthodontic treatment types; pre-treatment, braces, aligners, retention and so on. After several years of research and refinement, the company launched a system that allows patients to upload photos of their teeth using the DentalMonitoring app along with a ScanBox that attaches to the patient’s smartphone.
The AI analyses the images to track tooth movement, oral hygiene, aligner fit, and prescribed protocols set by each orthodontist, providing real-time feedback to both patients and practitioners. Since its launch, DentalMonitoring has been adopted by orthodontic professionals in more than 50 countries worldwide.
In 2023, DentalMonitoring UK started working with the NHS where they now monitor more than 9,000 NHS brace patients across a range of hospitals and private practices.
The system allows practitioners to oversee treatments remotely, improving workflow and enhancing patient engagement. The company says feedback from clinicians has been very positive, with many noting how the platform has provided big improvements in patient hygiene, reducing treatment lengths,
reduced unnecessary appointments and management of emergencies.
Of the 100 patients that started on Shetland, most were already in-treatment patients, while some were due to be bonded-up and begin their treatment shortly. A further 100-plus patients will now be added to DentalMonitoring by the team on Shetland and begin monitoring their teeth in the coming months, converting all orthodontic patients on the island on to DentalMonitoring.
In doing so, this will allow the progress of the patients to be tracked on a weekly basis. So that, for example, if part of the brace is damaged or if hygiene deteriorates, the practice can intervene and fix the problem. The images will also allow for the orthodontists on the mainland to see how their patients are doing without being on the island. It means that therapist/nursing team on the island can easily discuss a patient with the orthodontist remotely, knowing they are both seeing the same up-to-date, high quality intraoral images.
Rick Anderson, an account executive at Dental Monitoring, said: “In time, with patients scanning each week it may allow the Dundee-based orthodontists to prescribe remotely to the orthodontic therapists based on the island. This could help reduce the number of visits they would need to make to Shetland and mean their time on Shetland could be spent starting new patients and reducing the waiting list.
“Hopefully, through using DentalMonitoring, it will create a more robust ortho service on Shetland with it being less at risk from poor weather or orthodontist availability to travel to the island. There is also an environmental impact to consider, in that by monitoring patients remotely we may see fewer car and ferry journeys being needed from the patients, as well as fewer flights being taken by the orthodontists.
“Until now, in Scotland, DentalMonitoring had primarily been associated with private orthodontic care, with many assuming that the latest AI powered tech is too costly to use in NHS work. But with the Shetland project up and running, other NHS areas in Scotland are engaged in conversations to see if they could do something similar.
“While many regions have challenges relating to access for their patients, urban areas are also exploring whether the technology could help them to increase efficiency, boost capacity, manage staff shortages and tackle waiting lists.”