The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has created a difficult challenge for dental care organizations:
How do you choose the right partner, in a market flooded with AI companies?
The stakes of this decision are high — given its impact on patients’ oral health. But there’s no time to wait. Thousands of dentists are already using AI to analyze X-rays more accurately, educate patients more effectively, and handle insurance claims more efficiently. Simply put, AI is now an essential tool of the trade.
As members of the dental community, we have an obligation to embrace the latest technology, in a responsible way. Let’s talk about what that means.
WHAT RESPONSIBLE AI MEANS IN DENTISTRY
“Responsible AI” has become a buzzword in the business world, for good reason. It refers to artificial intelligence that is ethical in its development and application, with an emphasis on addressing concerns like privacy, security, and fairness. The goal is to harness the power of AI, without causing unintended harm.
We believe we need a clear definition of what responsible AI means in dentistry.
At Overjet, our perspective is that dental AI should reliably improve outcomes for patients — while keeping healthcare decisions in the hands of human clinicians. Our focus is to build technology that is extraordinarily precise and consistent at performing specific tasks, but that never oversteps its limits or gets in your way.
“DENTAL AI SHOULD RELIABLY IMPROVE OUTCOMES FOR PATIENTS — WHILE KEEPING HEALTHCARE DECISIONS IN THE HANDS OF HUMAN CLINICIANS.”
So how can you evaluate dental AI partners, with responsible AI as the standard?
Here are the four key questions we suggest asking any potential partner:
IS THE AI CLEARED BY THE FDA TO SUPPORT YOUR CLINICAL USE CASES?
Artificial intelligence is a powerful tool, but it is not a dentist. That’s why, to provide medically accurate findings, dental AI must be trained on an enormous set of images annotated by human experts, and then tested by human clinicians. This process gradually enables the AI to “learn" how to perform specific tasks, such as detecting and quantifying instances of decay on bitewing radiographs.
To validate the accuracy of this training, AI companies need to obtain clearances from the FDA, a process which involves rigorous clinical trials. This is how we approach our FDA clearances at Overjet:
Ensuring our AI is cleared for segmentation. At a high level, “segmentation” is the ability of AI to outline the exact shape of oral lesions. This approach is necessary to make the appropriate diagnosis, which depends on the size and the progression of tooth decay — not just the presence of decay. Only Overjet is FDA-cleared for segmentation of decay.
Covering the most important pathologies. Not all dental AI solutions are FDA-cleared to detect the pathologies that you diagnose on a daily basis. For example, our AI platform is FDA-cleared to measure bone levelsand outline periapical radiolucencies, which is not true of all dental AI companies. It’s worth verifying that potential partners support your key AI use cases.
Never recommending off-label use. Be wary of AI vendors that tell you it’s okay to use AI for applications that aren’t explicitly cleared by the FDA. One of the most salient examples here is using dental AI cleared for permanent teeth on pediatric patients, which requires dedicated clearances. Today, Overjet for Kids is the only technology that is FDA-cleared to detect, outline, and quantify tooth decay in children ages 4 and up.
If you hear conflicting information in a sales pitch, you can find the details of specific FDA 510(k) clearances here.
IS THE COMPANY HITRUST CERTIFIED?
Given the risk of data breaches in the healthcare sector, security needs to be a top priority for any AI partner. We believe that AI platforms should adhere to the widely recognized industry standard for safeguarding patient information: HITRUST® certification.
HITRUST is recognized as the standard because it unifies more than 40 different regulatory requirements and frameworks, such as ISO 27001, NIST SP 800-53, and HIPAA. Obtaining HITRUST certification is an extensive and ongoing process that involves annual audits, third-party penetration testing, employee training, and much more.
Overjet is proud to be HITRUST certified — a symbol of our team-wide commitment to safeguarding our customers’ data and privacy.
DOES THE COMPANY ACTIVELY MITIGATE AI BIAS?
The risk of bias in AI is an increasingly hot topic. Biased AI systems generate different results for different people, based on factors like their age and gender. For dental AI, this could mean less accurate findings for certain demographics, which could negatively impact their oral health.
When training our machine learning models at Overjet, we take steps to proactively reduce this risk. We validate that our AI findings are consistent for patients of different ages and genders — regardless of the imaging sensors used. Additionally, we intentionally source our training data from across the country, ensuring a diverse and representative sample.
In addition, we continually monitor and improve the performance of our AI. Overjet is able to see the actual decisions made by clinicians in treatment plans based on our findings, across tens of millions of patients. This allows us to identify cases where clinical decisions differ from AI recommendations, so we can relabel data and retrain models as necessary.
The ultimate result is that our AI has achieved an unmatched level of precision, for every single patient. We’re proud of the extensive roster of dental care organizations and insurers that have compared alternatives and ultimately chosen Overjet, making us the #1 company in dental AI today.
WILL YOU HAVE VISIBILITY INTO HOW YOUR TEAM IS USING THE TOOL?
Artificial intelligence is often seen as a “black box”: a complex system that gives very limited insight into how it actually works. But for dental care organizations that introduce AI, visibility is essential to monitoring how the technology is impacting treatment planning, case acceptance, and overall quality of care.
At Overjet, we’ve created the most advanced analytics in the dental AI space — so you can always keep track of how AI is supporting your organization. These analytics allow you to drill down on any clinical key performance indicator and see the actual radiographs and AI findings that led to care recommendations.
"Dental AI should never be a black box."
We believe you shouldn’t have to be an AI expert to understand our platform. Strong analytics are the difference between a mysterious black box and a transparent technology that you can deploy with confidence.
REVOLUTIONIZING DENTISTRY — RESPONSIBLY.
This moment is a turning point for dentistry. AI brings both incredible potential and new challenges, which means we need to move both quickly and carefully.
When we build a new application of AI, we work backwards to deliver the ideal outcome for patients with responsible AI. For us, this vision means delivering rigorously tested, FDA-cleared models for essential pathologies and age groups. It means meeting the gold standard in third-party HIPAA and security certification with HITRUST. And it means empowering dental leaders with clear analytics into how AI is supporting their teams’ performance.
We hope this guide helps you find the right AI partner to enhance patient care.
