Middle-market DSOs are taking advantage of artificial intelligence technology now more than ever to gain a stronger presence in the dental field.
VideaHealth has added its AI platform to 50 DSOs so far, including eight of the 10 largest DSOs in the U.S. Despite working with some of the largest players in the dental industry, middle-market DSOs have become VideaHealth’s fastest-growing segment, according to Founder and CEO Florian Hillen.
Mr. Hillen recently spoke with Becker’s to discuss this new trend.
Note: These responses were lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: What has led to the increased adoption of AI among middle-market DSOs?
Florian Hillen: It’s not so easy anymore [for middle-market DSOs] to get a lot of external financing to grow their footprint further. Usually middle-market DSOs would grow a lot by acquiring practices, but that has become much more expensive. The other big growth lever is to do same-store growth, and that’s where Videa AI is a perfect solution. The problem is they cannot grow as much anymore inorganically, so they need to grow organically.
The other [reason] is that many middle-market DSOs have more than one practice management system, and it’s really hard for them to get unified data in terms of how their offices are performing because they’re in these different systems. Videa AI enables them to get this unified data across the entire footprint because we just launched a product called VideaInsights, and that gives you business and clinical metrics across your footprint, independent of what PMS systems you are using. When you talk about the top market, like Aspen or Heartland, they have everything standardized or they have people on staff who do this, but the mid-market [DSOs] don’t have analysts and all of that, so they lean into our technology in order to get this done.
The third thing is hiring and retention. With Videa AI and our clinical suite, you can really train your dentists much quicker. That makes sense because the large DSOs have training teams, but mid-market DSOs don’t. They’re too small to have their own dedicated training teams, but they’re too large in order to learn through osmosis.
Q: Was this trend surprising to you?
FH: [It wasn’t surprising] that they would come, but the speed of adoption is surprising to me. I always believe this has value, but these value points I mentioned in terms of standardizing the data and all of that [make mid-market DSOs] an even better fit than the large DSOs, and I didn’t think about that … they actually have a bigger need than the large DSOs to some extent. So that acceleration of growth was surprising to me.
Q: How do you see this trend evolving over the next year?
FH: I think in the next two years, 80% of mid-market DSOs will adopt Videa AI. I think it will become the standard of care in the mid market in order to enhance clinical quality, increase same-store growth and make clinical quality and revenue visible and measurable across your footprint from various systems.
Q: What do you see AI growing in the dental field going forward?
FH: Act one was clinical AI to get the patients the right treatment without delay. Now, we are really into act two of AI in dentistry, and that is that the majority of tedious and manual tasks in a dental office will be automated in the not too distant future. I think we are seeing that. I would even make the claim that in three years, 80% of manual tasks will be automated in dentistry.
