How to Grow Your Practice with Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Greetings!
You’ve likely heard all the hype last year around artificial intelligence (AI) – so, is the hype just more marketing hype, or can you actually use AI in meaningful ways to produce positive improvements in your business results?
First, let’s quickly review the basics of AI, according to the University of Wolverhampton:
1. Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) is programmed to produce specific, or narrow, functions, such as speech recognition or vision recognition. The most well-known types include Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, or ChatGPT by OpenAI. ANI is being developed in healthcare applications to analyze medical records and assist in diagnosing diseases.
2. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is being programmed to perform intellectual tasks in a similar way to humans, adapting to new situations and learning across various fields. AGI is still in development with various predictions on when this technology will be fully realized, with some (e.g. Musk, Altman) predicting as early as 2025-26, and others predicting much later or never.
3. Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) would theoretically operate beyond human intelligence, or our ability to understand its reasoning. This is purely a hypothetical concept used in academic thought experiments, as no system has yet achieved ASI.
For now, the most commonly available AI technology available in the marketplace includes ANI, such as Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri, or a specific type of ANI often called Generative Artificial Intelligence, such as ChatGPT.
Generative AI technology is quickly expanding in popularity as it can be applied to many use-cases, such as generating written text, photography, art, videos, audio, music and more. This has tremendous value for creativity and business applications.
Other growing applications of AI include medical image analysis, data mining and natural language processing using large language models (LLM). The process of extracting information is referred to as machine learning (ML), which is programmed to identify patterns in data.
The use of AI technology in various industries, including dental and healthcare, seems to be inevitable. A recent study in the journal Healthcare (2023) found that 18.4% of healthcare workers are already using ChatGPT, with that number quickly growing, as another 84.1% of non-users expressing interest in utilizing ChatGPT in the future. Most participants (75.1%) were comfortable with incorporating ChatGPT into their healthcare practice.
Here, we’ll explore how to incorporate this technology ethically, safely and effectively to add value to your dental practice.
Applications of AI in Dentistry
According to a recent paper published by the journal Cureus (Apr, 2023):
‘ChatGPT has numerous applications in the health care system including dentistry; it is used in diagnoses and for assessing disease risk and scheduling appointments. It also has a role in scientific research. In the dental field, it has provided many benefits such as detecting dental and maxillofacial abnormalities on panoramic radiographs and identifying different dental restorations. Therefore, it helps in decreasing the workload.’
Furthermore, the authors of the paper expand that with any emerging new technology, there are both aspirations and apprehensions on its use. But, despite these concerns, AI has the potential to ‘revolutionize health care and improve dental care’.
Specifically, AI is being used in dentistry to detect and classify dental diseases:
‘AI has already shown high accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and precision in detecting and classifying malocclusion in orthodontics. Additionally, AI can automatically classify dental restorations on panoramic radiographs and detect dental and maxillofacial abnormalities such as periodontal diseases, root caries, bony lesions, and facial defects.’
In addition to disease diagnosis, AI is also being used for treatment planning and evaluation. Specifically, a subset of AI known as machine learning (ML) is programmed to identify patterns in data, and a specific type of ML, known as deep learning (DL), is based on artificial neural networks, inspired by the human nervous system.
These neural networks have various applications in dentistry, including:
1. Restorative: ‘they can detect tooth decay or restorations and aid in selecting the appropriate caries excavation method. Kühnisch et al. concluded that using a standardized, single-tooth photograph and the AI method can result in caries detection with over 90% accuracy.’
2. Endodontics: ‘they can detect periapical lesions and root fractures, evaluate root canal systems, predict the viability of dental pulp stem cells, determine working length measurements, and forecast the outcome of retreatment procedures.’
3. Orthodontics: ‘neural networks can help diagnose and plan treatments, mark cephalometric points, analyze anatomy, assess growth and development, and evaluate treatment results.’
4. Dental Surgery: ‘they can assist in planning orthognathic surgery, predict post-extraction complications, detect bone lesions, and plan dental implant treatments.’
Applications of ChatGPT in Dentistry
ChatGPT is a form of generative AI that receives text prompts as inputs and produces or generates outputs as written text or information. The quality of the outputs produced by ChatGPT are based on the quality, or accuracy, of the inputs of data given to the model.
Each new model has improved accuracy in the information it produces or generates. For example, a recent paper published by Nature (Apr 2024), tested ChatGPT 3.5 (released Nov 2022) compared to ChatGPT 4.0 (released Mar 2023) on its ability to answer questions from the United States Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE) Step 2, as well as its ability to generate a differential diagnosis based on corresponding clinical vignettes from published case reports:
· ChatGPT 3.5: 47.7% accuracy
· ChatGPT 4.0: 87.2% accuracy
Further, OpenAI has released their latest model, ChatGPT-4o, on May 2024, which has been shown in studies to be 92.4% accurate in data extraction.
Balel et al. evaluated the use of the information generated by ChatGPT in the field of oral and maxillofacial surgery. The authors found that ‘ChatGPT shows promise as a means of providing patient information for oral and maxillofacial surgery.’ However, the authors cautioned dental surgeons to consider using ChatGPT as ‘an addition to their practical knowledge and experience’.
You can consider AI models, like ChatGPT, similar to a junior employee in your business that needs training and oversight, but can produce great results with supervision. They can perform additional functions to help support your team, even when your business is closed:
‘ChatGPT can provide patients with reliable and accurate information about dental health and hygiene that caters to their specific needs. It can also serve as an educational resource for students and professionals in the field by providing a vast amount of knowledge and information. Furthermore, ChatGPT can assist dentists with personalized patient care, scheduling, billing, diagnosis, and treatment planning, as well as monitoring patients' dental health and hygiene by providing regular reminders and check-ins.’
The authors also remind us to consider the limitations of using ChatGPT, mainly:
‘While it can provide accurate information and advice, it cannot provide personalized care, emotional support, or physical treatments. Hence, ChatGPT should be seen as a supplementary tool in dentistry, not a replacement for in-person care.’
Limitations of AI in Dental Practice
Although AI technology has various useful applications in your dental practice, like any new technology, it comes with limitations. As stated above, the quality of the outputs is based on the quality of the inputs. So, using an older model with outdated datasets will produce inaccurate results. You can mitigate this risk by using the latest models and datasets.
Another limitation with using any AI tool is ensuring data privacy, especially in the fields of dentistry and healthcare, where there are strict data privacy rules on handling patient data. The best way to mitigate this risk is to ensure that no patient data is handled by third-party technology tools, unless they’ve been specifically engineered for healthcare applications.
Most popular AI tools, like ChatGPT, haven’t been engineered for healthcare applications, so sharing sensitive patient data will put your practice at risk. In the examples above, these large language models were used in research settings where datasets were fully anonymized and no identifying patient information was present.
In recent years, there has been a growing number of technology providers developing software applications specifically for dentistry, medicine and healthcare, with strict data privacy rules in place to ensure their products are HIPAA compliant and meet the standards set by provincial colleges on data privacy. If you decide to implement AI technology in your practice, ensure you select technology partners with software specifically engineered for dentistry and healthcare.
Top 5 Applications of AI in Dental Marketing
Now that we’ve explored various ways that AI and ChatGPT can be implemented in your dental practice, how can we use these technologies to create the best dental marketing strategies to grow your dental practice?
Here are the top 5 ways to use AI technology in your dental marketing to grow your practice:
1. Evaluate dental website and provide recommendations for increasing search rankings
2. Generate patient education materials and digital content to attract new patients online
3. Connect with website visitors using AI chatbot to answer questions and collect leads
4. Analyze phone calls to evaluate appointment booking outcomes and staff performance
5. Capture and evaluate patient feedback using sentiment analysis to identify trends
1. Evaluate Dental Website and Provide Recommendations for Increasing Search Rankings
There are a growing number of AI tools developed to evaluate your dental website, including your on-page SEO and content, and provide audit reports and recommendations for improving your content to increase your rankings.
For example, Optiimus uses advanced AI tools for dental SEO that evaluate your website’s SEO score with 300 data points analyzed. Then, these tools provide an in-depth SEO analysis of your website, keyword data of high-volume keywords, snippet editor to customize page titles and meta descriptions of each web page, add structured data, breadcrumb controls, readability analysis, advanced schema generator and more.
Our AI tool integrates with your Google Search Console account, providing an in-depth view of the keywords you rank for in Google, your sitemap status and any technical indexing issues. We also integrate Google’s URL Inspection API data inside of your website to display Google’s perspective of your Site’s Overall Presence, Index Stats of your content and more.
2. Generate Patient Education Materials and Digital Content to Attract New Patients Online
One of the most well-known AI models today is ChatGPT, a type of generative AI that produces or generates text outputs from text-based inputs, or prompts. Generative AI tools, like ChatGPT, are becoming more commonly used in various applications to generate patient education materials and digital content to attract patients online searching for information.
According to a study published in the Frontiers of Public Health journal, ‘about 80% of Internet users search for health information online’.
In another study the authors found that ‘ChatGPT shows promise as a means of providing patient information for oral and maxillofacial surgery.’ However, the authors cautioned dental surgeons to consider using ChatGPT as ‘an addition to their practical knowledge and experience’.
In other words, using generative AI models can be helpful tools to create patient information and other forms of digital content, but they need to be carefully used to ensure they provide accurate information that protects your patients and practice.
For example, instead of asking ChatGPT to generate an entire article, you could ask it to generate a detailed content outline that includes all the topics your audience will expect when searching for a specific keyword. The content outline can include headings and subheadings, which will provide you with an initial framework for completing the article using your own knowledge and experience.
Also, you can consider asking ChatGPT to write your title tags and meta descriptions for each web page, ensuring they’re optimized for SEO with your target keywords.
In addition to generating text-based content, generative AI models are also creating photos, images, artwork, videos, audio, music and all forms of creative digital content. This trend will undoubtedly produce interesting, unique and creative digital content online.
Some of the most popular generative AI models that produce images include DALL-E-3, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and Adobe Firefly, while the popular AI models that produce videos include Synthesia, Runway, Deepbrain and Sora, by OpenAI.
Using AI tools to create digital content can be a useful strategy in dental marketing, but only if that content genuinely adds value for your audience. The goal of content marketing is to produce digital content that your audience finds valuable and is actively searching for online. This attracts new visitors to your website, searching for information or digital content to learn about their oral health.
3. Connect with Website Visitors Using AI Chatbot to Answer Questions and Collect Leads
Many website visitors have a quick question, but don’t want to call or email, as it’s too cumbersome or time consuming; they would rather chat using live chat software, as it’s quick and convenient.
Live chat software connects your website visitors to your front desk team, providing great customer service while increasing appointment bookings. Website visitors can ask questions about your dental clinic, services, practitioners, and more. This new line of communication provides a convenient patient experience, alleviating their concerns before booking an appointment.
But, many website visitors will ask similar questions, which slows down your team’s productivity. They’ll ask questions related to your dental services, hours of operation, insurance coverage, parking availability, and more. These repetitive questions can be a time burden for your already busy team.
You can provide additional support to your team with an AI chatbot, such as Optiimus AI Chatbot, which provides a dental AI chatbot engineered to interact with healthcare patients. Our AI chatbot answers your patient’s frequently asked questions and guides visitors to book an appointment. Your team can monitor the chat, jump in, or let the AI chatbot answer questions and book appointments.
There’s a growing trend of using AI chatbots in dental and healthcare settings. According to Grandview Research, the global healthcare chatbot market is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23.9% from 2023 to 2030. Furthermore, about 88% of all people in another survey had a first-hand experience and chatted with an AI chatbot in 2024, with 80% reporting they had a positive experience.
The main benefit of using AI chatbots in your practice is that they provide additional sales and customer service support – 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. They work like an extra employee, but even when your clinic is closed on evenings and weekends.
Although humans are still preferred to answer complex questions, AI chatbots are often preferred in answering quick questions with no hold times any time of the day.
4. Analyze Phone Calls to Evaluate Appointment Booking Outcomes and Staff Performance
Many potential patients will call your dental clinic or orthodontic practice, but not every caller will book an appointment. What’s the reason the caller didn’t book? It may be related to your treatment services offered, pricing objections, scheduling conflicts, clinic location, or other reasons. Understanding the caller’s reasons for not booking an appointment is valuable information for your dental practice.
Our Optiimus Dental CRM uses AI technology to listen to each call and monitor the outcome. We provide valuable information for your practice, such as the outcome of each call and the reasons for not booking. This information helps you improve your practice and dental services to better reflect your patient’s oral health needs.
In addition to phone call analysis, our dental CRM provides AI analytics that captures what you care about the most: new patient appointments, staff performance and your advertising’s ROI. Our CRM captures new patient leads from any digital marketing channel, measures the appointment booking rate of each staff member, and transcribes each call to provide coaching opportunities for your team.
For example, one staff member may receive 10 phone calls and book 8-9 appointments. Another staff member will receive 10 phone calls and only book 4-5 appointments. What’s the difference in their results?
By analyzing each phone call using AI, you can evaluate the call outcomes, potential objections to booking an appointment, and identify coaching opportunities to improve your front desk team’s performance in booking more appointments, improving your marketing ROI.
5. Capture and Evaluate Patient Feedback Using Sentiment Analysis to Identify Trends
It’s generally less expensive to retain an existing patient than to find a new one. In their famous book published by Harvard Business Press, Bain & Company found that ‘a 5% increase in customer retention rates can result in a 25-95% increase in profits’.
One of the best ways to improve patient retention is to improve the overall patient experience by identifying what’s working well in your practice, as well as potential problems to proactively address before they escalate. One of the easiest ways to identify potential problems is to capture patient feedback through patient surveys.
You can capture patient feedback using Optiimus Patient Satisfaction Surveys, which automatically sends out patient surveys through SMS text or email. Patient survey responses are saved and stored in a digital database to be analyzed using AI technology.
Once you receive your patient’s feedback as surveys, you could receive hundreds or thousands of responses, depending on the size of your practice, which would be challenging to read and understand. Using AI technology, we can aggregate all of your responses into groups, clusters, themes and trends, and conduct sentiment analysis to evaluate how your patients are feeling about their experience.
By capturing your patient’s feedback over time, you can also evaluate the impact new policy changes or team members are having on your patient experience. Capturing your patient’s ‘Customer Satisfaction Score’ (CSAT) and ‘Net Promoter Score’ (NPS) across all channels provides an all-in-one metric of your patient’s experience with your practice, and willingness to refer new patients.
Conclusion
The latest advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, such as generative AI and machine learning (ML), are providing exciting new developments for healthcare, dentistry and dental marketing. There’s a growing acceptance of healthcare workers, patients and the general public to interact with and use AI technologies in new ways to learn and work.
AI technology is being used in creative new applications in dentistry and healthcare, including detecting and classifying diseases, providing treatment plans and creating patient education. AI is also being creatively applied in top dental marketing to accelerate tasks and provide in-depth analysis on marketing results and website optimization.
From auditing websites to providing content recommendations, AI is being used to work smarter and faster, providing a competitive advantage in many cases. AI chatbots can work 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, analyzing phone calls and patient feedback. Although there are many limitations in any emerging new technology, if used ethically and responsibly, AI can be a valuable addition to your dental team.
If you have any questions or need any help, feel free to contact me directly. I read and respond to every email. All the best in growing your dental practice!
Sarkis Hakopdjanian
President | Optiimus
(587) 409 5990 | (833) 409 0979
sarkis@optiimius.ca
