Wardah Inam, co-founder and CEO at Overjet, on VatorNews podcast

The company uses AI to give dentists more insight into disease identification and progression

Steven Loeb and Bambi Francisco Roizen speak with Wardah Inam, co-founder and CEO at Overjet, a company that uses artificial intelligence to give dentists more insight into disease identification and progression.

Overjet uses its software to measure mesial and distal bone levels in bitewing and periapical radiographs, giving dentists more insights into the diagnosis and treatment planning of periodontal disease. This is a condition, one that can result in tooth loss, that affects roughly 46 percent of U.S. adults. 

The company recently raised a $42.5 million round of funding, bringing its total fundingf to nearly $80 million.

Our overall goal is to understand how technology is radically changing healthcare: the way we screentreat and measure progress and outcomes. How we’re empowering the consumer. Whether we’re creating productivity that drives economic costs down? And how tech advancements change the role of the doctor. 

Highlights from the interview:

• Inam became interested in dental diagnosis when she got a new dentist who gave her a treatment plan that was very different from what she had received before. That made her realize that dental diagnosis is complicated but technology can play a big role in helping standardize some of the planning, as well as help communicate with the patient. If a patient doesn't understand, it's very unlikely they're going to accept the treatments that the dentist is recommending.
• Providers use Overjet’s technology to help understand the clinical performance in their practices, such as if the right treatments are happening, the right protocols are being followed, the right treatments are being recommended, and if patients are accepting the treatment. All of that originates from the clinical data and that had never been analyzed before. 
• The company helps insurance companies automate claim processing reviews that are done manually. The only way you can analyze that clinical data is hiring dentists who will look through that data. Overjet helps quantify that and move from a subjective review to a more objective review, and speed up the review, so that the patient doesn't have to wait weeks to know whether their insurance will cover something or not.
• Periodontal disease is not only an oral disease, but it also leads to other medical conditions, including diabetes, chronic health conditions, and other inflammatory conditions. It has led to people not only having bone loss, but also loss of teeth.
• When dentists they think about data collection and data analysis, they think of that as a hygienist’s job. The hygienist provides them that information and communicates information to the patient. Because of that, dentists think of this as an assistive tool, not as a replacement tool, which is why they’ve had such quick adoption.
• Other companies in the dental space, like Henry, Tend, Quip, and Smile Direct Club, are potential customers for Overjet. Basically what they're doing is providing good care to patients, and they need technology to help support that, so they see this as the technology to be utilizing to improve the care that they're providing.

Thank you to our sponsors: Advsr; a boutique M&A advisory firm. They wrote the book on startup M&A called "Magic Box Paradigm: A framework for startup acquisitions." Go to Amazon.com to get your copy. Also thanks to Stratpoint, an outsourced engineering firm and Scrubbed, an online bookkeeping firm. If you need affordable and quality engineering and bookkeeping, check them out. We highly recommend them!

Subscribe to our podcasts to get our interviews and shows as soon as they're published!