MouthWatch names 3 winners of inaugural Teledentistry Innovation Awards

December 18, 2018

The three winners of the first annual "Tellie Awards" include an academic grants administrator, pediatric dentist, and dental hygienist.

MouthWatch, a leader in innovative teledentistry solutions, digital case presentation tools and intraoral imaging devices, recently announced three winners of its first annual Teledentistry Innovation Awards, affectionately known as the Tellies, during an exclusive invitation-only event hosted during the 2018 Greater New York Dental Meeting.

The purpose of the awards is to achieve the following:

Highlight the many ways that teledentistry is being implemented across a broad spectrum of dental care including public health, private practice and organizational settings.

Recognize individual, forward-thinking dental providers who are realizing the full potential for connected dental care technology and who are reshaping the practice of dentistry and the state of oral health globally.

According to MouthWatch Founder and CEO Brant Herman, “We were very pleased to celebrate the first annual Teledentistry Innovation Awards by recognizing three forward-thinking dental professionals who have implemented teledentistry in ways that are revolutionizing the practice of dentistry and the delivery of patient care.”

Continue to page 2 to find out the winners...

NYU College of Dentistry / Liz Best, Grants Administrator (top, left)

NYU’s College of Dentistry is consistently on the leading edge of technology to enhance care delivery. Liz Best recognized the important role teledentistry could play for the dentists of tomorrow and obtained a HRSA grant to fund the implementation of teledentistry technology into the curriculum of dental students at the school. Working with TeleDent™, NYU has incorporated several facets of teledentistry technology into 2nd year dental students’ curriculum.

Now more than 350 students each year are exposed to the process of data collection, including intraoral images and videos for use in a teledentistry enabled referral or consultation. This includes learning how to use an intraoral camera for image capture combined with clinical documentation suitable for review by a distant site dentist or specialist. Students then review data from a teledentistry visit and treatment plan remotely. Future uses of teledentistry technology in the NYU College of Dentistry include medical/dental integration with rural clinics as well as putting the TeleDent systems onsite in medical settings across NYU’s medical campus, including pediatrician’s offices, speech pathology and other non-dental provider settings. Off-site outreach programs are also incorporating teledentistry to improve collaboration and communication between providers and the dental school clinics.

Continue to page 3 to read about the second winner...

Miracle Dental / Brittany Kinol, DMD (top, center)

Miracle Dental, with two offices in the Pittsburgh, PA area, reaches children in a range of settings that are most convenient to the children and their family. By coordinating care delivery with Head Start programs, schools and public insurance carriers, Miracle Dental’s team of mobile hygienists use teledentistry and portable equipment to deliver preventive care to students in the most convenient way possible. In the state of Pennsylvania, the role of Public Health Dental Hygiene Practitioner allows Miracle Dental hygienists to see patients in these settings without the need for a dentist being on site. This allows for a very efficient program while maintaining doctor supervision through live video conferencing and store and forward teledentistry.

Patients in need of restorative care are connected to Dr. Kinol and her colleagues through the TeleDent™ all-in-one teledentistry platform for visual evaluation of any key clinical information. This remote evaluation and treatment planning make the future restorative visit more efficient and effective. Plus, kids love to see what’s going on in their mouths and learn to understand the importance of home care.

Continue to page 4 to read about the third winner...

Smart Smiles / Staci Stout RDH, BSDH (top right)

Smart Smiles is a school-based oral health program based in Utah that focuses on dental disease prevention. Their mobile hygiene program provides care to children at school to ensure they have access to oral healthcare. A team of hygienists equipped with portable preventive care equipment and teledentistry technology see children at over 30 schools in the Salt Lake City area, where they provide cleanings, fluoride and all required preventive care services. Intraoral images, video and clinical data are collected during the student’s appointment with the dental hygienist. This information is then securely synced to the cloud and shared with the collaborating dentist. The dentist then reviews the relevant clinical data and creates a treatment plan which can then be shared with the student and their family. By connecting the kids to care, in a setting that’s most convenient to them, Smart Smiles has improved dental health for thousands of children while showing a care delivery model that is sustainable and embraced by schools, students and families.

Click here for more information on the Teledentistry Innovation Awards

"We congratulate and thank this year’s Tellie Awards winners for their commitment to using teledentistry technology to make a tangible difference in improving access to care and the state of oral health in their communities," Herman says.

Nominations for next year’s Tellie Awards are currently being accepted online at http://teledentistryinnovationawards.com/. Self-nominations are welcome.