Dr Amanda Bassey-Duke explains why she would now never practise dentistry without the help of artificial intelligence.
I’ve been using Pearl since April 2023. Clyde Munro has a massive push to incorporate digital technology into dentistry. I was in the right place at the right time – I spoke to one of the leads of digital dentistry within Clyde Munro and she said: ‘We have this new technology.’
The next thing I know, Pearl is on my computer. I booked a 30-minute chat with Robiha from Pearl for the next day, and she showed me how to use it. By the end of the day, I had shown three other colleagues.
It is incredibly straightforward. Like I mentioned, my practice is quite technologically advanced. I have a PrimeScan; my nurse knows that as soon as she processes the X-rays, she turns on the PrimeScan. The patients are then able to see their X-rays. There is no mystery, no dark arts going on behind the scenes. I tell them what it is. They know where their decay is without any doubt. It’s become part of my every exam.
Better patient understanding
One thing that most dentists will empathise with is a patient coming in and saying: ‘The dentist just filled my tooth.’ It’s a sentence we’ve heard time and time again. ‘The dentist just filled my tooth. There was nothing wrong. The dentist wanted money, and the dentist just filled my tooth.’ Now they can see the issue, instead they’re telling me: ‘Please fill my tooth.’
The conversation I’m having with patients is so deep, largely helped by Pearl’s colour coding on the images – the enamel is a different colour, the dentine a different colour, and the pulp a different colour.
People within the dental field know that decay is irreversible but patients don’t always understand this. But now I can show the patient this and that it’s getting deeper like I told them it would six months ago. They’re now way more educated and have a better understanding. They are the ones telling me: ‘Please fill my tooth so I don’t need to spend over £1,000 for a root canal.’
Time saving
For the people who are still on the fence, what Pearl now has is the compare tool. I put the X-ray from before next to the X-ray from now. I say, ‘Well, it was there before, and it’s here now. Do you want me to intervene, or do you want to keep on waiting? Because you and I can now see that it’s getting deeper.’
What’s also really helpful is that you can print out the X-rays for those people on the fence. There’s always people who need to go and speak to their families before committing to treatment. You’re banking on someone who’s not clinically trained to go and transfer information that they have little knowledge of. What Pearl let’s you do is print out your X-ray, colour coded and annotated, and this can be given to the patient to take home with them.
One of the key benefits is that it doesn’t add any more time to my patient exam. It actually reduces the time because I have a lot less explaining to do, thanks to the visual aids it provides. It empowers the patient – they are pointing out things they don’t understand and it forces us to have those conversations.
They’re better off for it and I’m better off for it too. I always say to people, my patients could be the most dentally educated patients in Scotland!
As an associate dentist, I will not work in a practice that does not have Pearl!
For more information about AI solutions in dentistry, visit hellopearl.com.
This article is sponsored by Pearl.
