Dentists are looking to telehealth and mHealth to
improve access to oral care during emergencies - and to convince reluctant
patients to overcome their fear of the dentist's office.
May 13,
2019 - Dentists are starting to take a closer look at how telehealth
and mHealth can improve their care delivery.
The possibilities are
numerous. Some dentists are using mHealth apps to enable patients – regular and
new – to ask questions about oral care, make appointments or schedule emergency
visits. Some are using mHealth devices like VR glasses to sooth their jittery
patients during cleanings and other routine work.
Others are using
telemedicine to facilitate virtual visits, and are targeting the roughly $2
billion spent each year on emergency oral care at hospitals and clinics.
“We’re the next
telehealth specialist,” says Maria Kunstadter, DDS, co-founder of The
TeleDentists, who was exhibiting at last month’s American Telemedicine
Association conference in New Orleans. “I don’t know anyone (who’s in need of
emergency care) who wants to wait six weeks for an appointment with their
dentist.”
Telehealth companies
like The TeleDentists are targeting a pain point – quite literally – in
healthcare: negative health outcomes caused by a lack of dental care, often due
to the fear of the needle and the drill.
“More than seven
million people each year need immediate access to help for urgent dental
issues,” Kunstadter said in a press release earlier this
year. “It’s no wonder, given the fact that tens of millions of people each year
neglect maintenance on their mouth and teeth. In fact, the average person in
this country – regardless of age or economic profile – has not been to a
dentist in three years, making it inevitable that these problems occur.”
The telemedicine
model for emergency care is simple. Health systems, payers and self-employed
businesses partner with a telehealth company to provide on-demand access to
dentists. That access is through a virtual visit, with dentists offering care
or guiding on-site medical assistants, prescribing medications and scheduling
follow-up care.
Kunstadter says the
connected care platform doesn’t take the place of the local dentist, but
facilities emergency care and coordinates the follow-up trip the dentist. It can
be especially helpful for those who lack access to a dentist, such as college
students, truckers and businessmen.
“The best thing we do
is put people in dentist’s offices,” she says.
The teledentistry
industry has been growing fitfully, and is just now appearing on the radar of
larger telemedicine and telehealth providers like Philips, which is
reportedly developing an mHealth platform for teledentistry in
Europe. Others have been testing the platform as a means of pushing oral health
video visits into underserved areas like low-income neighborhoods, community
health centers and Native American communities.
Also advocating for
the industry is the American Teledentistry Association, which
sprang into being roughly one year ago.
“Teledentistry is
really in its infancy,” Marc Ackerman, DMD, MBA, FACD, the group’s founder and
Director of Orthodontics at Boston Children’s Hospital, told mHealthIntelligence.comlast year. Like other medical specialties,
he says, it needs an advocacy group to guide practitioners, develop best
practices and ensure the technology is available for those who want to use it.
“The immediate goal
of the ATDA is to educate dental professionals and the public about the
benefits of teledentistry,” Ackerman said. “Teledentistry has the ability
to help patients get access to needed dental care they deserve, both affordably
and conveniently. It's our mission to modernize access to care through
teledentistry with advocacy for the implementation of innovative teledentistry
guidelines and solutions.”
In the meanwhile,
dental practices across the country are experimenting on their own.
In Hopkinton, MA,
Hopkinton Square Dental is using virtual reality glasses designed by XRHealth
to calm nervous patients during routine procedures. The VR glasses replace
regular sunglasses worn by patients to protect their eyes.
“It really helps
patients disengage – especially the children,” says Cherry Harika, DMD. “They
feel like they’re in their own world, and they’re able to relax.”
The two-office dental
practice has been using VR glasses for only a couple months, but they’re
getting rave reviews from patients – and they’re using the glasses as a
marketing tool, in hopes of coaxing more people to overcome their fear and
visit the office.
Harika says the
mHealth devices aren’t cumbersome, so she and her colleagues can work without
being hindered. And they allow her to focus more on her work and less on trying
to keep the patient calm and still.
“Sometimes I have to
tell them to stop moving their necks,” she says, “but that’s about it.”
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