Building the referral bridge dental care has been missing | Brant Herman of Dentistry.One & MouthWatch

Brant Herman (0:04)

We think when you look at 50% of Americans who don't go see the dentist every year, those are populations that we really want to engage more actively and get them a starting point. Because when you engage patients and you get them on a preventive track for dental care, rather than a reactive surgical reaction, you save a ton of money. And I think more and more research, it's proven it's effective. It really does improve their health care outcomes across over 60 chronic conditions and systemic health conditions. So we see teledentistry is that really simple touch point.

Logan Plaster (0:48)

Brant Herman, CEO and founder of MouthWatch and Dentistry.One. Thank you for being with me today.

Brant Herman (0:54)

Yeah, great to be here.

Logan Plaster (0:55)

We have had many chances to talk about the work that you're doing in teledentistry and really kind of being on the bleeding edge of innovation in oral health. But I want to get a sense of where you're at, where the company's at in 2026

What are some of your prime focus areas?

Brant Herman (1:12)

Yeah, well, MouthWatch has been a member of StartUp Health for quite some time. We do a lot with dental imaging and helping with intra-oral cameras, which help a dentist chair side show a patient what's going on in their mouth. It's also great as a tool that can be used in non-dental settings. So nurse practitioners or pediatricians or school nurses, they can capture images that come from a patient, but they may not need to be in a dental chair per se.

And that really ties into where we're heading and have spent a lot of time, which is Dentistry.One, which is a virtual first teledentistry network, where we really see the ability to bring patients into the oral health care journey, not only from the comfort of their home or their couch, but from any health care touch point where they might find themselves.

Logan Plaster (2:06)

Okay. Who's an ideal patient for teledentistry? Is this for any routine checkup or is this for extreme cases or what?

Brant Herman (2:13)

Yeah. Well, I think when patients have a dental home and regularly go for preventive care to an office, teledentistry then becomes more of a cosmetic consultation tool or an emergency treatment triage tool.

We think when you look at 50 percent of Americans who don't go see the dentist every year, those are populations that we really want to engage more actively and get them a starting point. Because when you engage patients and you get them on a preventive track for dental care, rather than a reactive surgical reaction, you save a ton of money. And I think more and more research, it's proven it's effective. It really does improve their health care outcomes across over 60 chronic conditions and systemic health conditions. So we see Teletentistry is that really simple touchpoint as a way to turn a pediatrician visit into a dental screening, to turn an OBGYN screening or visit into a dental connection. So that's where we love technology really eliminates that travel or transport or scheduling to get in for the cleaning. We can be that first touchpoint that makes it all really easy.

Logan Plaster (3:29)

Let me just dig in a little bit on those two examples you gave. You mentioned a pediatrician visit and an OB visit. I want to give people a picture of what teledentistry really is. So you bring a child in to the pediatrician.

Give me a case example of how it might play out that they then end up tapping into Dentistry.One.

Brant Herman (3:46)

Yeah, so I think there's a known value in earlier prevention for children. And we know that more kids are seeing a pediatrician for well visits than they are for a dental visit.

So dental visits are recommended at year one, and then regularly following that. But that doesn't really happen as frequently. So what we want to be able to do is from that point, which might just be educational, it might be a consultation with parents about best practices and what foods, and leaving a baby with a bottle as they fall asleep. These little things that can really change your trajectory of a kid's oral health with their primary teeth, so that they have the habits in place to stay healthy with their permanent teeth. But we see the referral process is a little bit more effective. I think everyone knows referrals aren't ideal even in kind of the confines of a medical system. But dental then lives outside of that. And so the referral process to go from that pediatric visit to say, do you have a dentist? No, let me connect you with a consult. And then a key part of what we do is we coordinate care to in-person visits. So then we're helping that mom or dad book the appointment, find a dental home. And when you start looking at CHIP or Medicaid populations, this becomes a key challenge of just finding who is a provider that can support that patient base and then really helping get them in and assign them a dental home and get them some treatment.