Dentaltown November 2019 - 16

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Move the decimal point over again, 100, and again,
1,000, then 10,000, 100,000, 1 million, 10 million,
100 million. The bigger the data, the better it figures
out what's going on. Imagine what a company that
makes one of every 20 crowns in American could do
with this much information.
Soon, a lab will be able to look at your scan and
automatically rate how to proceed:
* For maybe the top 20% of scans in quality: "Yes,
this impression is good: We're going to trim the
margins here, and it'll go right to production."
* If the scan's more in the 60-80% range, they
might think, "Let's send this back to see if
Dr. Howie wants to trim this margin himself."
* And if it's under 60%, they'll say, "We're going to
send this back to the doctor to say that it doesn't
look clear enough to trim this ourselves-would
you care to reimpress?"
* If it's under 40%, they'll say, "This scan stinks,
and you need to rescan it, or you can send it
somewhere else, or we're going to charge you a
higher fee because the odds we'll have to do it
again are high."
Over time, if the lab ends up doing too many remakes
for you, it might say, "Six out of every hundred crowns
for you have to be remade, and we're not playing that
game. Now, instead of charging you $100 for a crown,
we're going to charge you $106."

Additional uses for AI
AI is also being used to uncover insurance fraud:
A company called Pearl checks images that have been
submitted, and can identify whether an X-ray is a
duplicate of something that's already been submitted
by other dentists in other countries.
Dashboard dental companies like Practice by
Numbers can pull out your accounting and practice
data and compare it to to that of its other clients to
show you efficiences and problems.
Imagine how supply chain management can affect
how you order dental supplies. With the internet of
things going into big data, going into cloud computing,
soon your supplier should be able to look at your
practice calendar and say, "Dr. Smith is scheduled to
take five impressions on Monday, and she doesn't have
enough impression material," and it will automatically

NOVEMBER 2019 // dentaltown.com

be shipped to you. No more humans coming by once
a week, pulling tags and you running out of things.
Dentists might hate it if insurers get into AI and big
data: What if they run your numbers and realize that
10% of your root canals are extracted in 12 months, so
it's not worth it to them for you to do their patients when
an endodontist a mile down the road whose extraction
rate at one year is only 1%? I like this transparency as
a parent and grandparent-I don't want my future
generations suffering through bad dentists-but I expect
a lot of dentists will have ulcers about this because
they've never liked competition.
When all things become transparent, insurance
companies are going to start telling you to really pick
your specialties, because you're going to have to demonstrate proficiency to qualify. That's something you've
heard me say many times: Don't delude yourself into
thinking you can do general dentistry and molar endo
and implants and whatever else. Pick your specialties
based on proficiency ... or AI just might. ■

See Howard Live!
Howard Farran, DDS, MBA, is an international speaker
who has written books and dozens of articles. To
schedule him to speak at your next national, state or
local dental meeting, email rebecca@farranmedia.com.

2020
Jan.
11

Sunset Oral & Maxillofacial
Surgery Group

May
1

"Ortho 2020: Adapting
to a Changing World"

Sept.
18

Harrisburg Dental Society

Portland, Oregon

Rome, Italy

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

http://www.dentaltown.com

Dentaltown November 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Dentaltown November 2019