Dental Asia May/June 2018

Under the Spotlight
across it in an orthodontic conference a
c o u p l e y e a r s a g o . D M i s t h e b r a i n c h i l d o f
Mr. Philippe Salah, a French innovator and
entrepreneur. Dr. Duncan believes that
everyone should be thankful to Mr. Salah
for coming up with DM.
DM uses articial intelligence (AI) and
deep learning to monitor orthodontic
tooth movement, archwire passivity, tooth
movement velocity, and aligner t, amongst
a myriad of other intra oral observations. DM
is divided into three integrated platforms: a
mobile application for patients, a patented
movement tracking algorithm, and a webbased
Doctor Dashboard where practitioners
receive updates of patient’s progress.
The DM application for patients is a
revolutionary tool designed to help patients
capture dental
pictures easily
and efficiently.
DM is developed
for Android and
iPhones, making
it accessible to
everyone. The app
guides the patient
through the
process of taking
the pictures on a
regular schedule
suggested by
the orthodontist
according to the
treatment plan.
From a patient’s
perspective, they
use a smartphone app and video camera
to record necessary data for analysis. As a
result, patients only need to be seen by their
orthodontist when a clinical action (broken
archwire, dislodgment of bracket, or aligner
t issues) is required.
Dental Monitoring in the practice
Dr. Duncan has been using DM in his
practice since July 2017. Subsequently, all
his aligner cases are managed using DM on
a weekly basis.
“It has been the most radical change in
my practice since introducing Invisalign in
2000. It is a game change and will continue
to evolve rapidly.” he remarked.
In addition, Dr. Duncan has been
running a trial on doing an entire aligner
treatment with as few appointments
as possible. Currently, this trial (with
20 patients) is tracking about three to
five appointments in total including
i n s e r t i o n , p l a c e m e n t a t t a c h m e n t s ,
interproximal reduction (IPR) and nishing.
He believes that this is a ground-breaking
success in Invisalign treatment and will
make orthodontics more accessible to the
public.
“In the last few months, I am starting
to move selected patients into this format.
We oer patients the opportunity to only
come as needed when using DM. Hence, our
appointment schedules, sta time and my
time are all rapidly changing,” he continued.
The basis of DM is improving quality
treatment outcomes. Dr. Duncan shared
that with the help of DM, he could see
clinical problems and issues within a few
days of it occurring, and at a pixel level,
which is clearly far higher than the human
eye can detect. As a result, his patients are
more compliant, treatments track better,
and fewer and less complicated treatment
renements are needed.
“Anything the human eye can see, DM
can do it better and it is denitely capable
of learning from any recorded data,” he
added.
In addition, patients get a quality
outcome and they also appreciate the
reduction of appointments with improved
digital communication. Dr. Duncan considers
time to be one of a person’s most valuable
commodities and DM respects this to
eectively manage patient appointments.
26 DENTAL ASIA
MAY / JUNE 2018