So what’s Dental Monitoring all about?

The obvious attraction of aligners is that they’re virtually invisible. But it’s also a treatment that's really convenient for patients, with the potential for short and infrequent visits to your practice. The risk though is that issues can easily arise without the patient becoming aware. Loss of tracking is when a tooth or group of teeth fail to accurately follow the prescribed aligner movement and this will often manifest as a gap between the aligner and the tooth – this is known as an unseat. If this is picked up late, treatment time will inevitably be extended and more appointments needed.

Dental Monitoring (DM) was developed to track dental movements using Artificial Intelligence (AI) with the aim of helping clinicians to remotely monitor patients undergoing clear aligner treatment. DM’s proprietary AI (built by processing over half a billion photos) can analyse, detect and report on 130oral events using images taken on a smartphone.

The patient takes intraoral photos on their smartphone, with the help of the DM Scan Box and Cheek Retractor, once a week. The DM app lets patients know if they should change to the next aligner or not. It also sends an automatic message to the patient highlighting any unexpected observations like unseats, missing attachments or plaque deposits. Patients can also receive specific notifications and advice from their clinician via the app and can send messages too. Patients see their treatment progress with a before/after comparison and this, along with achievement statistics, helps them to stay motivated throughout their treatment.

From the clinician’s point of view, the DM app provides a unique way of closely monitoring the evolution of their patients’ treatments, spot potential issues and set clinical goals for complete monitoring of treatment progression. It also prevents unexpected clinical situations arising by receiving accurate notification according to an agreed customised protocol. But for some clinicians, the greatest benefit of DM is improved patient compliance – regular monitoring encourages absolute commitment to aligner treatment!

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