AI is Driving Teledentistry 2.0: What It Means for DSOs

Sponsored Content

By Brant Herman, CEO, Dentistry.One

When DSOs first began adopting teledentistry, it was largely out of necessity — a way to maintain patient continuity during the pandemic and address urgent care needs remotely.

Since then, teledentistry has evolved from an emergency solution into a strategic advantage. By removing friction from the patient journey, the technology helps patients avoid long commutes or time away from work, while enabling DSOs and group practices to make better use of their operatory schedules.

Today, with the addition of artificial intelligence, teledentistry is entering a new era: smarter, faster, and more personalized than ever before.

Growth from Reach, Convenience, and Trust

Patient recruitment and retention have always been about location, convenience, and trust. Teledentistry 2.0 acts across all three of these patient attractors by expanding geographical reach, strengthening trust, and making getting into care as convenient as ever.

This evolution is at the heart of Dentistry.One, a highly scalable, virtual-first oral health platform designed to accelerate the patient journey and enhance a DSO’s bottom line – all from the patient’s smartphone. Here’s how:

Dentistry.One’s AI-powered dental screening tool, SmileScan™, analyzes user-submitted photos and delivers a report flagging potential signs of common dental concerns, such as plaque, inflammation, and crowding. Users are then guided to personalized next steps—including the option to schedule a live or asynchronous consultation with a licensed dentist or get connected to a local dentist.

While SmileScan™ is not a diagnostic tool, it helps patients become more aware of their oral health between dental visits and encourages preventive action. After receiving their screening results, users are guided to personalized next steps, including the option to schedule a live or asynchronous consultation with a dentist, or get help booking an in-person appointment with a local provider or even the DSO’s local office.

For DSOs, this capability represents a new way to extend engagement beyond the operatory, reaching patients earlier in their journey, establishing trust before their first appointment, and fostering continuity of care across virtual and in-person touchpoints.

Each additional virtual interaction accelerates the patient journey by building awareness, trust, and connection with the DSO well before the patient walks through the door.

Where live and recorded virtual consultations once streamlined scheduling, AI now makes those consults smarter, engaging and guiding both the patient and the provider toward earlier, data-informed decisions.

This means a DSO can reach a patient earlier, recommend preventive care, and build a long-term treatment relationship while creating a supportive method of engaging a patient, at no cost to them.

The potential impact on same store sales is tangible. By making it easier than ever for patients to engage with dental care, DSOs can increase the number of patients receiving preventive and minimally invasive treatments; services that are profitable, repeatable, and less likely to cause patient anxiety.

This creates steadier revenue streams while positioning the DSO as a trusted preventive care provider rather than a last resort for more invasive procedures such as extractions and root canals.

In addition, younger, digitally fluent patients expect healthcare that’s personalized, immediate, and mobile-first. SmileScan™ meets those expectations, transforming smartphone photos into meaningful insights and next steps.

A Future Path to Integrated HealthCare Opportunities

Thanks to SmileScan™ and Dentistry.One, oral health education and consultations are always within reach of a DSO’s patients. This helps create a greater focus on prevention and increases home care compliance. A virtual consultation may be where a patient’s first discussion about oral-systemic health risks occurs.

Algorithms can flag potential systemic connections, such as gum inflammation that may indicate elevated diabetes risk; giving DSOs a chance to align and integrate more closely with the broader healthcare ecosystem.

This is where DSOs have a unique advantage. At scale, they can capture the benefits of this integration faster and demonstrate to payers and health systems alike that dental care belongs at the center of population health strategy, not at the margins.

About the Author: Brant Herman, Founder and CEO of Dentistry.One LLC a virtual-first dental care network dedicated to advancing oral care through innovative virtual solutions. His leadership in developing Dentistry.One reflects his commitment to improving health outcomes, enhancing care delivery, and optimizing the patient experience. Contact him at Brant@Dentistry.One. Connect with him at https://www.linkedin.com/in/brant-herman/