E4.01 | How DIBS AI is Revolutionizing Indirect Bonding

00;00;00;03 – 00;00;13;11
Speaker 1
Hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Ortho Thrive. Today we’re going to talk to Ryan Williams, the VP of Sales of Ortho Select. That’s the team behind Dibs eye. They’re going to tell us all about the amazing things they’re doing with indirect bonding. So stay tuned.

00;00;31;12 – 00;00;36;17
Speaker 1
Ryan, why don’t you start off telling us about your role with Ortho Select and how you got involved with the dibs?

00;00;36;17 – 00;01;02;25
Speaker 2
I yeah, I happy to thanks for the opportunity. So my name is Ryan Williams. My role at dibs eye is I’m in charge of anything customer facing. So that includes marketing, sales, customer service and training and onboarding that we perform. How I became involved. I don’t have a background in orthodontics. My background is actually technology sales and marketing.

00;01;02;27 – 00;01;27;17
Speaker 2
And so I’ve helped scale a couple of, companies in the past. And my introduction to Gibbs, I was during the pandemic, where I was a chief revenue officer of a company, and the world felt like it was collapsing around us. And, as you as you probably remember, at least in a lot of industries I was at at the time I was in the we’re selling to automotive dealerships, principally.

00;01;27;17 – 00;01;50;03
Speaker 2
And everything closed down. Right. So so it was it was a scary time there. So anyways, I put out my resume in a few places and, somebody at Ortho Select, which is our company name, noticed a URL, a website on that, on that resume, and he called his father in law and says, hey, do you know this guy from this company?

00;01;50;03 – 00;02;14;24
Speaker 2
And and he goes, yes, why do you ask? And he goes, well, he’s he’s put his resume out there. You might be interested. And he goes, we’ll stop searching. You found your guy. And, so that that that uncle was a or that father in law was a rich uncle to the founder of Ortho Select. And that rich uncle is the one that got the angel investment together to fund, the original development of did I.

00;02;14;24 – 00;02;21;04
Speaker 2
And so, so basically one of the, one of the moneymen recommended me. So that’s how I ended up here.

00;02;21;05 – 00;02;24;29
Speaker 1
Perfect. That’s the best way to get I got a good job right there.

00;02;25;01 – 00;02;31;17
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah. I’ll be forever grateful. To Quinn Gardner. He’s a he’s a great guy. He’s he’s since passed away, but. Yeah. Great guy.

00;02;31;18 – 00;02;37;13
Speaker 1
Can you walk us through the story of the guy? What was a founder trying to accomplish that problem? Was he trying to solve.

00;02;37;14 – 00;02;58;12
Speaker 2
Yes, yes. Well, he tells a story better than I do, but I’ll give it. I’ll give it a good shot. So Stephen Gardner is the founder of Worth Select. And Stephen, was newly married. Found out they’re pregnant. His wife was making most of the money. And the relationship at the time, she was in mortgage, mortgage loans.

00;02;58;12 – 00;03;33;04
Speaker 2
And, so they were doing well that way. They had dual incomes. And he felt like they’re doing fine. Well, she gets pregnant and suddenly they’re going to go to one income. So, Steve, Steve started frantically trying to figure out what am I going to do. And you know, it’s time to grow up, I guess. And he had been delivering pizzas and he had been working in an ortho lab a couple of different times, and and he started thinking about that and goes, you know what, those study models that I was getting paid hourly for, I could crank out 20 of those in an hour, right?

00;03;33;04 – 00;03;58;20
Speaker 2
Or whatever. It was some amazing amount. He just considered himself very, very fast at doing that. So we thought, well, I could just do that. I could do. So he started his own business in his basement, had his wife help. Yeah, literally in his basement. It was kind of an unfinished basement. We’re in Utah, and there’s there’s a lot of basements in Utah, so it’s not it’s not a dark, dreary place in Utah where, you know, rats roam or anything like that.

00;03;58;23 – 00;04;23;20
Speaker 2
So, but he did he he he started a study model business in his basement, and eventually the HOA kicked him out because of the shipping and the everything that was coming to his house, they found out he’s running a business in his basement. And so they kicked him out, and he continued to grow the business. Eventually it became a digital, digital study model company.

00;04;23;20 – 00;04;46;07
Speaker 2
Right. He’s able to scan the study models anyway. So his business model at the time was just, I can do this really, really fast, really, really consistent quality. And I can do it cheaper than anybody else. And so that was his. That was his business. Well, so he’s going along doing at the peak something like 10,000 study models a month.

00;04;46;09 – 00;05;09;17
Speaker 2
So yeah. So he had a booming this is a booming business right. This is nothing. Most of us would be ecstatic to have that kind of business. But then they developed this scanner technology, right. That the the what became Itero, that Invisalign bought and suddenly there’s this idea of, oh, goodness, nobody’s going to need study models.

00;05;09;17 – 00;05;30;18
Speaker 2
You can just scan the patient’s mouth and it’s a lot more comfortable and it’s cheaper and etc., etc.. So he saw the writing on the wall and said, oh, I need to pivot this company and figure out what my next thing is. So he thought back to when he was in he was in orthodontics lab tech. And what’s the other thing in the ortho lab that everybody hated doing?

00;05;30;20 – 00;05;53;17
Speaker 2
Well, it was in direct bonding. And so he thought, well, everybody hates doing indirect bonding. I why can’t I figure out a way to make that better and fix that? And so famous last words. Right. Oh how how hard can that be. Well he he thought well gosh why don’t why don’t we create a software to do all this stuff and we’ll just 3D print the trays.

00;05;53;20 – 00;06;14;08
Speaker 2
Should be easy. Well, so that was like ten years ago. And it wasn’t until about three and a half, four years ago that the technology of that happy combination of material science and printer resolution came around, that you could actually produce a tray to deliver the brackets, a transfer tray.

00;06;14;08 – 00;06;16;04
Speaker 1
Only 3 to 4 years ago.

00;06;16;09 – 00;06;42;07
Speaker 2
Yeah, they’ve been around longer than that, but they were never good. Right. That’s that’s the reason most doctors to this day don’t do indirect bonding. I think the last, the last stat I heard was less than 15% of doctors doing direct bonding. So. Yeah. So the, you know. Yeah, surprisingly so. But the reason that’s so low is because it’s always been a pain.

00;06;42;14 – 00;06;50;18
Speaker 2
And so Steve is finally figuring out a way to make this a lot less painful. And that’s, that’s really what we can attribute AI success to right now.

00;06;50;19 – 00;06;53;25
Speaker 1
Okay. So what makes Dave’s AI different from its competitors?

00;06;53;28 – 00;07;15;18
Speaker 2
Yeah. So there’s really seven things to, to be honest, that we consider to be our competitive advantages. You know, and some of our competitors probably do some of these things, but you can’t find all of them in a, in a single place except for did say so. We’re pretty excited about that. So I’ll just see if I can remember these rather quick.

00;07;15;21 – 00;07;43;00
Speaker 2
There’s something the idea of highly automated setups where the brackets are placed for you based on where you want the end result to be. We do all that automatically. And we use AI to do that. So our AI does not learn a doctor’s habits and try and replace a doctor. I really can’t do that. The reason it can’t is because it learns your bad habits as well as you’re good, right?

00;07;43;00 – 00;08;05;27
Speaker 2
You can’t choose that anyway. So. But, but I can get us to a standard and so we can highly automate that. Taking that scan and getting it where we need it to. Andrew six keys, for example. We can do that with AI. And so that’s what that’s what we’ve chosen to do. So highly automated is number one. Number two we do things fast.

00;08;06;00 – 00;08;29;17
Speaker 2
So rapid turnaround time traditionally and indirect bonding. If you’re using a third party lab then you’re looking at 2 or 3 even as far out as six weeks out in order to. Yeah. Well, how how are you going to do a younger patient six weeks out. Right. The teeth move whatever tray you design won’t fit exactly right. And you’re sacrificing your accuracy at that point.

00;08;29;17 – 00;08;34;15
Speaker 2
So yeah, you have to do it fast. Our turnaround time is 5 to 6 business days.

00;08;34;17 – 00;08;36;07
Speaker 1
Six weeks would be outrageous.

00;08;36;07 – 00;08;59;05
Speaker 2
So we we consider that a competitive advantage only because nobody else has been able to duplicate that yet. Our trays. So the third thing I would say, the trays we have, we use a standard material that’s available on the open market. So it’s it’s not hard to print our trays, but we do have, a coating that we put on them.

00;08;59;05 – 00;09;17;24
Speaker 2
It’s called shear release. And that coating makes them nonstick because. Because in ortho, right, you’re going to put primer on the teeth. And the reason you put primers of stuff sticks to your teeth. Well, if you put too much primer on trays, also stick to your tray to your teeth. So the shear release eliminated that issue. For us.

00;09;17;24 – 00;09;20;01
Speaker 1
That’s a big deal. That would be very uncomfortable.

00;09;20;01 – 00;09;50;06
Speaker 2
Yeah, what that means is that if your tray sticks, then it it tears. When you remove it, it has to be you have to take it off in chunks. And nobody wants that experience. But you also, you can’t reuse your trays if they tear. And we want our trays to be reusable because if they are, then if you have somebody with a broken bracket, let’s say they come back 2 or 3 weeks later, you can take our trays and you can section and create that individual jig, pull the bracket out of your bracket inventory.

00;09;50;09 – 00;10;18;25
Speaker 2
Boom bada boom. You can bond that patient with which makes an emergency appointment something you can delegate as a doctor, right? So you don’t have to be there for all those emergency appointments. So pretty cool. Fourth thing would be true talk expression. And this is unique. We are unaware of anybody else actually doing the math to calculate the, the talk.

00;10;18;27 – 00;10;45;23
Speaker 2
Excuse me? Calculate the slop in the slot of the bracket. So, so this is interesting because oftentimes in in orthodontics, right. You you want to start with the end in mind. Well that end in mind may or may not be true depending on how good your simulations are. Right. And the reality is most of the simulations aren’t absolutely true, including ours.

00;10;45;26 – 00;11;11;07
Speaker 2
Right? Ours is you know, it’s it’s not perfect, but ours is better than anybody else’s because we actually took the time to calculate the slop in the slot. So we need to know the arch wire. We already know the morphology of the tooth. We have a digital scan of every single bracket. So we can do the math to calculate when that wire is going to engage and produce torque to move that tooth.

00;11;11;09 – 00;11;22;18
Speaker 2
We do support in-office printing. So if somebody wants to run their own lab, they can either print it in their home office or some third party down the street, whoever they prefer to do business with, that’s really nice.

00;11;22;18 – 00;11;25;11
Speaker 1
So they can use their or own printer or another third party.

00;11;25;11 – 00;11;47;24
Speaker 2
In fact, interestingly, we started this business thinking that everybody would prefer to print an office, but but today, about 80% of our clients print through us. So most, most don’t want the extra work of printing in office. But but some do. And they’re looking for and it makes complete sense if they’re trying to do, you know, a same day start or next day start, that sort of thing.

00;11;47;24 – 00;12;16;02
Speaker 2
So it makes sense that we the other one of the other competitive advantages we have is we allow doctors to take their existing bracket prescription. They don’t have to change, but we can customize their existing bracket prescription. So they get with stock brackets you get custom without paying for custom brackets. So we think this is a recent thing that we’ve introduced.

00;12;16;04 – 00;12;18;13
Speaker 2
We just introduced it a few months ago at R0.

00;12;18;13 – 00;12;25;08
Speaker 1
I could see why no one wants to change, especially if you really like a bracket. I mean, that’s going to be a huge yeah, obstacles.

00;12;25;10 – 00;12;48;00
Speaker 2
Why not keep my brackets, keep my pricing costs low. Still be custom, which means custom by definition. The reason you want to do it is you’re eliminating all of this work, all of these wire bends, because the prescription is now custom to where you want that tooth to end up. So we are I would I would argue that we’re the low cost leader.

00;12;48;03 – 00;13;11;02
Speaker 2
Is there stuff that’s cheaper. Yeah. But are you going to spend that much time. Is a doctor going to spend two hours doing a case set up to save some money? That seems like that doesn’t make sense. So there are options out there that are extremely manual, even including old school IDB. But nobody wants to do that. That’s not that.

00;13;11;02 – 00;13;20;16
Speaker 2
Nobody makes money doing that. So we’re the low cost leader, especially to the level that we’ve automated and made things simple. I think that appeals to to most doctors.

00;13;20;16 – 00;13;26;08
Speaker 1
It’s amazing that you could be the low cost leader and have all these other differentiators at the same time.

00;13;26;08 – 00;13;47;21
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah. Well, that that speaks to our team, specifically Steve, Steve Gardner, who, who really runs the product development side of what we do. And he is he’s huge into I am using AI to be as efficient as we can in our product development. And, and yeah, hats off to him for that.

00;13;47;21 – 00;13;50;26
Speaker 1
All right. So what kind of orthodontic practice is the really good fit for you.

00;13;50;26 – 00;14;19;15
Speaker 2
Typically we solve problems right. The typical problems we’re solving for orthodontists is efficiency related. Usually most people say, hey Ryan, I just want to be efficient. That’s why I’m looking at you today. And efficient means maybe one of two things or both. Efficiency is usually chair time overall, but there’s two, right? There’s chair time during the bonding appointment and then there’s chair time over the course of treatment.

00;14;19;17 – 00;14;42;17
Speaker 2
And so we we contribute to reduce chair time at both of those. So a bonding appointment industry is probably 90 minutes on average for upper or lower for bonding appointment. And that’s chair time. So that’s including hygiene hygiene and giving away free t shirts or whatever. Right. We take that from 90 minutes to 45 minutes. So cut it in half.

00;14;42;17 – 00;15;16;28
Speaker 2
We cut it in half. Yeah. So, so that is the equivalent of an appointment saved in treatment there. And it frees up your schedule so you can see more patients, etc., etc.. Right. The other efficiency piece is on the the treatment time. Because if we can shorten treatment time then we eliminate appointments. And so that’s also proven to be true right now with the data that we’ve analyzed from, I don’t know how many doctors we’re up to now, but, we’re somewhere between 3 to 4 appointments saved.

00;15;16;28 – 00;15;50;16
Speaker 2
I think the last that I saw was 3.61 appointments saved on average. Yeah. So that’s, that’s usually, we’re usually dealing with doctors that efficiency is a priority. And if they’re worried about efficiency, that means they’re a little short on time, which means they’re probably a busier practice. They might have multiple locations, which creates a whole nother level of complication with multiple doctors and associate doctors, everybody placing brackets in crazy locations.

00;15;50;19 – 00;16;18;10
Speaker 2
We can provide a lot of consistency in bracket placement if you’re sharing sharing patients between doctors, things like that. Staffing issues usually is a big issue. Since since Covid, it feels like nobody can get enough good people and then keep them. And, so we basically lower the bar as far as training to have somebody be able to bond for a doctor.

00;16;18;12 – 00;16;21;16
Speaker 2
And so that’s that is usually a big driver as well.

00;16;21;16 – 00;16;25;07
Speaker 1
Would you say doctors orthodontists love the most about DBS? I,

00;16;25;09 – 00;16;26;29
Speaker 2
Orthodontist I like the low price.

00;16;26;29 – 00;16;31;00
Speaker 1
Yeah, that makes sense. So it’s a good straightforward answer.

00;16;31;03 – 00;17;02;20
Speaker 2
They do. Let’s let’s let’s be honest. Right. The the other, that’s when they first sign up with us. Right. Every everybody’s trying to be wise with their, with their money. What’s interesting though is once we have doctors engage with DBS, I, we never hear about price again. Right. They they. Well, because I think they’re I think their attitude changes instead of looking at us like, oh, yet another expense for my business.

00;17;02;22 – 00;17;25;24
Speaker 2
Their attitude shifts like, Holy cow, this is an investment and this is my return on investment, right? So if you look at it from an ROI, if you’re faced with spending $5 to get a 300% return or $15 to get a 400% return, you’re going to spend more money every day of the week to get a better return.

00;17;25;26 – 00;17;29;13
Speaker 2
So I think that’s what happens in their minds a little bit.

00;17;29;13 – 00;17;34;15
Speaker 1
You mentioned the software places these brackets automatically. How much of this is AI driven.

00;17;34;21 – 00;18;02;11
Speaker 2
Yeah. So it’s all worth all. Realistically it’s about 80 or 90% AI driven. So what the software does is it positions the teeth in Android six keys and based on that tooth location, then it kind of reverse engineers from there and puts the bracket in just the right spot to get the tooth there. And that is all done via via AI.

00;18;02;14 – 00;18;30;03
Speaker 2
But before you can even get to that point, you have to clean up the model. You have to identify what teeth are, where the gum line is, what’s, what the long axis is, what the marginal ridges, what the occlusal edge is, all of those things. Right. So there’s, there’s AI throughout that process doing all of the that for human that would be mind numbing repetitive tasks of clicking and clicking.

00;18;30;03 – 00;18;53;26
Speaker 2
And that’s how you used to do it actually. But we, we’ve, we’ve eliminated all of that manual work. And, and then we get to the part where, oh, if this is where you want your tooth, then this is where the bracket needs to be. It’s not. Yeah. It’s not perfect. It’s probably 80 to 90% perfect. So so we still have a human being.

00;18;53;28 – 00;19;14;20
Speaker 2
We have a team of people that open up each case as they come through and check them, because people’s teeth can be really random, wonky, crazy, whatever the adjective is you want to choose there. But, they can be so crazy that it kind of can mess with the AI, and the AI doesn’t know quite what to do with it or marks it wrong.

00;19;14;22 – 00;19;20;05
Speaker 2
So we have we have humans that make sure that the quality’s there before we ship it out the door.

00;19;20;05 – 00;19;25;12
Speaker 1
I’m glad that we all we have to have an expert involved in there all the time, of course.

00;19;25;16 – 00;19;51;19
Speaker 2
Because we’ve automated so much of it, though, that makes our turnaround time really fast. I think our nearest competitor, from the time you submit a case to us to win, the doctor can review it. I think the the fastest is like a couple, 2 or 3 days, something like that. We’re we’re a few hours. I mean, we guarantee we guarantee it in less than 24 hours worldwide with all of the different time zones.

00;19;51;21 – 00;20;00;27
Speaker 2
So if if you’re in the United States or Canada and you’ve submitted it and it’s not, you know, 5:00 in the afternoon, then you can expect to get it back in just a couple hours. I mean.

00;20;00;27 – 00;20;06;12
Speaker 1
That’s how you should use AI. It’s helping you with the really annoying tasks you don’t want to do yourself. And it speeds things up.

00;20;06;12 – 00;20;34;01
Speaker 2
That’s that’s where it strong. That’s that’s what it’s suited for. You can’t expect AI to learn how to be an orthodontist. That’s, that’s that’s called generative AI. It just takes an immense amount of data for a generative AI to begin learning and seeing trends. You know, give me a doctor that, you know, has done a few thousand cases or 10,000 cases or whatever the threshold is for AI.

00;20;34;01 – 00;20;56;00
Speaker 2
Just start learning them. Right? So sometimes sometimes doctors think that this is going to replace them or do their job for them. And that’s that’s not realistic. It, it it just would take too much data, too much time to get there. Maybe sometime in the future it can start finding trends, but then you have to train it on which trends you want it to follow and which ones you want it to ignore.

00;20;56;02 – 00;21;13;03
Speaker 2
And, so yeah, there’s not a near future. Where did say I was is going to replace orthodontist. So orthodontist out there your future secure your educational is worthwhile. That was a smart investment so early.

00;21;13;05 – 00;21;18;25
Speaker 1
I always joke I wish I didn’t even know about orthodontists when I was going to college. I would be one right now. Yeah.

00;21;18;28 – 00;21;21;10
Speaker 2
Hey, how come I didn’t know is such a good idea?

00;21;21;12 – 00;21;28;05
Speaker 1
Yeah. No, I don’t believe about this. Oh, so you talked about how doctors can bring their own brackets. How does that flexibility help them?

00;21;28;05 – 00;21;51;28
Speaker 2
Yeah. So? So doctors I’ve learned since I’ve been in the industry asking a doctor to change their bracket prescription is sort of like asking them to change their religion. It’s, it’s a big ask, right? It’s like a change of the way of life. I’m Austin and, so, yeah, our one of our competitive advantages is that that we actually configure our DBS AI platform around the doctor’s preferred prescription.

00;21;51;28 – 00;22;19;12
Speaker 2
So they don’t they don’t have to change. And, you know, sometimes doctors actually see they can visually see the effect of their prescription in DBS, AI. And they actually will modify their prescription a little bit. It’s interesting. It usually it’s in the molars with the amount of torque and stuff on the molars. Usually, sometimes they go, oh, you know what, I’m going to change that prescription a little back and see what that’s doing.

00;22;19;12 – 00;22;50;20
Speaker 2
Better than I could see it before. So, but but it’s cool. It takes work. It’s hard to adapt your software to every. I mean, the the possibilities of bracket options are almost endless, right? Because we get we had doctors that have bring this into brackets they bought on eBay from somewhere in the Far East. Right. Who knows where these brackets came from or how good they are.

00;22;50;20 – 00;23;25;04
Speaker 2
And we have to configure our platform for those. And then we have I mean then you have Armco brackets which have a very unique prescription to them, a very unique wire system to them. And so all those nuances, we have to we have to program around and anticipate and then it’s, it’s almost like another business in our business because when people submit a case to, did I, we send them the little trays with brackets inserted.

00;23;25;07 – 00;23;44;07
Speaker 2
Right. So that’s a tricky thing because where are we getting those brackets from. Right. So every doctor has their own prescription. We have bracket reps sending us brackets where we inventory those brackets. They are the doctor’s inventory, but they happen to be in our lab. And as their cases come through.

00;23;44;08 – 00;23;47;02
Speaker 1
Oh, you’re almost acting like a fulfillment center at the same time.

00;23;47;08 – 00;23;55;16
Speaker 2
Yeah, that’s that’s a good way to say it. Yeah. Which is tricky because everybody has their own inventory every, every single doctor.

00;23;55;16 – 00;24;01;01
Speaker 1
Yeah. That would be entirely different business. I mean, that’s a whole department of Amazon. Wow.

00;24;01;01 – 00;24;24;26
Speaker 2
Okay. Yeah. And it’s hard to hard to have high quality. Right. Like right now we’re shipping between 6000 to 7000 cases a month. Right. So as we’re, as we’re processing those is, you know, imagine the quality control to make sure that we’re not putting brackets in upside, right? Right. And not upside down and, and by accident because because we’re still doing that with humans.

00;24;25;03 – 00;24;32;20
Speaker 2
It’s not like we have robots, you know, magically doing that for us. So, mistakes happen, but, but we’re actually still pretty good at it.

00;24;32;24 – 00;24;38;19
Speaker 1
I let’s talk about your latest innovation Signature series. What is it? How is it a game changer, in your opinion?

00;24;38;19 – 00;25;07;22
Speaker 2
Over the last, last 3 or 4 years, really, there’s been a big push towards custom, right? Customization. That’s why you’ve seen, folks like, clone and Light Force, kind of blossom is because they’re offering this idea of custom brackets. And so with our business model, though, we, we work well with all brackets, including clone, for example.

00;25;07;25 – 00;25;30;00
Speaker 2
But you know what if what if you’re an American orthodontics office, you prefer a, you have a great relationship with them and they do a good job. What if you want to be able to customize and reduce your wire bends with their brackets? Well, that’s where we come in. We’re literally able to take your existing bracket prescription and customize them.

00;25;30;03 – 00;25;58;16
Speaker 2
All right. So how do you do that. So here’s this goes back to that idea of of our technology where we’re calculating the slop in the slot case. So because we can do that it’s kind of creates this chain of events because we can calculate the slop in the slot. Then we can now forecast a wire bend. In fact not only forecast wire bent but forecast the percentage bend required.

00;25;58;18 – 00;26;26;15
Speaker 2
And if we know that, then what if we have the what if this is the surface of the tooth, right. And you have your bracket pad. Normally it’d be like this. But if you’re going to have a wire bend on this bracket, what if we created a gap and we could eliminate a wire bend. Right. So what we’re doing in the software, our software allows you to create a gap like that between the pad and the surface of the tooth.

00;26;26;18 – 00;26;50;16
Speaker 2
With that gap. Then we can fill that gap with adhesive. And that’s what people often refer to as custom bases and custom. It’s not new like custom bases have been around since IDB was invented in like 1972. So it’s it’s not a new concept, but the, the the fact that we can measure exactly how big that gap should be.

00;26;50;18 – 00;27;24;07
Speaker 2
That’s pretty cool. And and so now we have the ability to customize. So we can customize, you know torque. We can customize rotation. We can customize in and out with all with these options. So that’s what the signature series is is that ability to customize prescriptions. There’s really three elements of customization to our Signature Series service. That is the first one is we learn the doctor’s preferences.

00;27;24;10 – 00;27;41;02
Speaker 2
So instead of a doctor getting a case and going, oh, you know, I prefer a smile arc or I, you know, in this scenario I want a little curve of speed or whatever. We know that and we’ll set that up for them. So we’ll do that, work for them. In addition to that, we can customize their bracket prescription.

00;27;41;04 – 00;27;59;18
Speaker 2
And this fall, in fall 2025, we will be able to also create those custom bases for them. So the tray will actually arrive and the bracket pads will already be custom customized to that bracket or to the desired prescription.

00;27;59;20 – 00;28;02;12
Speaker 1
You think this is going to affect chair time at all?

00;28;02;15 – 00;28;28;01
Speaker 2
It is because I think everybody would agree universally that, customizing the bracket prescription reduces treatment time. And what we’re doing is we are doing that in another way for two major benefits. One is the doctor doesn’t have to change the bracket prescription, and they can do it at a fraction of the price. We’re very excited about Signature Series.

00;28;28;01 – 00;28;36;29
Speaker 2
We think that’s a game changer actually. So we’re excited to roll that out. It’s a lot of work. We’ll roll it out the rest of this year. To our existing doctors first.

00;28;37;06 – 00;28;42;15
Speaker 1
Oh, that makes sense. So it’ll be done. What did you say at the beginning of next quarter? First quarter, second quarter.

00;28;42;18 – 00;29;00;10
Speaker 2
We’re we’ve already started. So right now we’re set in early June or mid June. We’ve already started. We’ve got, several doctors that were early babies testers. They, they continue to be on it. And then we, I think we brought another or we’re in the process to bring another five on right now.

00;29;00;13 – 00;29;06;19
Speaker 1
All right. So what do you think your biggest driver for growth is? How are you guys getting this two new orthodontists?

00;29;06;25 – 00;29;33;17
Speaker 2
We believe our biggest drivers of growth are twofold. One is this idea of custom. Right. So that’s why we’re doing that’s why we think it’s a game changer. Nobody’s been able to do this at scale. We think we can do it. And we’re really, really excited about customizing bracket prescriptions. The second driver, we believe is the words that we hear from doctors are predictability and control, right.

00;29;33;17 – 00;30;01;23
Speaker 2
That’s what they’re looking for when they when they peek into the future and they, they see that end result. They want predictability and control. So what we’re working on in our development now for the rest of this year will be a lot of focus on on biomechanics, because if we can understand the biomechanics, the math behind the biomechanics, then our models can be more accurate.

00;30;01;25 – 00;30;26;05
Speaker 2
And that will give that predictability and control to the doctors. So we’re we’re excited about that. That’s where we’re we’re pouring our development dollars into, into biomechanics. So so what that means like in a real terms. Right? In real terms, like right now, if you look at an animation and our software, it animates tooth movement, but it kind of skips some steps, right?

00;30;26;05 – 00;30;49;24
Speaker 2
It’s not it’s not real real real right. It’s kind of okay okay. That could probably happen. But with biomechanics, we will be able to say we’ll be able to have a timeline. Right. You could drag that timeline and go, all right, if I want those molars, if I’m expecting that, that 7 or 6 to come down that far, you know, when will that happen realistically?

00;30;49;26 – 00;31;15;23
Speaker 2
And whether your whether you’re talking on a tooth or in an hour or extruding or intruding or in or out, if you’re rotating a tooth, depending on the tooth and the root structure and the bone density, right. It affects the time it takes to move those. Oh, and the forces of your why, there’s all these variables and it’s mathematically extremely challenging.

00;31;15;25 – 00;31;25;25
Speaker 2
We are so excited about it. It’s going to it’s going to be, you know our our moat number eight or whatever, that we’ll be able to brag about. So we’re, we’re really excited. We think that’ll drive growth.

00;31;25;27 – 00;31;32;20
Speaker 1
All right. What about onboarding. What is the onboarding process like. How do you make sure the team is following the bonding protocols that you have.

00;31;32;20 – 00;31;54;12
Speaker 2
Yeah. So when we started we did all of our onboarding online. And it was a disaster because because, I mean, we didn’t know and we didn’t you know, we didn’t have the resources to do anything different. So we did what we could with what we had. But we’ve since learned that people don’t follow protocols. They learn over zoom.

00;31;54;14 – 00;32;18;13
Speaker 2
So and, and there are people that have, in their defense, but the majority didn’t very well. So, we have changed our onboarding process. The focus of our onboarding process is an on site training. So we we literally fly one of our trainers from our Salt Lake City headquarters where I’m located. And, we fly them to the doctor’s office, and we, we train them.

00;32;18;15 – 00;32;44;04
Speaker 2
So what that looks like during the onsite training is we usually take about three hours of training. We we review the bonding protocols. Obviously the bonding protocols are, you know, pretty relevant to other any other bodies you’re doing too, including direct bonding. So it’s a little bit of a refresher there. But you’d be amazed how many people are all over the chart, all over the board on what protocols they follow for bonding.

00;32;44;04 – 00;32;47;01
Speaker 1
Are there any like really common mistakes you see over and over again?

00;32;47;07 – 00;33;05;19
Speaker 2
I can’t speak to common ones. I can speak to the outliers because I hear about the outliers. Like like we have offices where, you know, they’re not promising and there’s other there’s other approaches to that, but they’re not promising at all. They’re not. They’re just skipping that step entirely. We had a couple of with a couple that weren’t priming.

00;33;05;22 – 00;33;26;15
Speaker 2
And you got to wonder, you got to wonder what was the thought process there. So anyways, we we try and get everybody on the same page and create that baseline. So everybody’s consistently following. And then we add to that the indirect bonding piece. And we have in practice with models we bring models and trays and brackets and and they practice.

00;33;26;15 – 00;33;46;07
Speaker 2
So they can not have excessive flash. And they can get over the learning curve a little bit because it takes 2 or 3 cases to get over the learning curve. Realistically. And then and then we then we have somebody doing something to eat break for lunch. And then we come back and we bond patients in the afternoon following the protocols we we learned that morning.

00;33;46;07 – 00;33;48;11
Speaker 1
Oh you have patients to bond. Yeah.

00;33;48;14 – 00;34;15;00
Speaker 2
We actually schedule with the office and say, hey, let’s do 3 or 4 bonding that afternoon. All of them I and because that’s where the that’s where the rubber meets the road. Right. If you can you can lecture all you like. But when you actually see people doing it and mistakes are made or mistakes aren’t made, but it doesn’t go perfectly, then you’re we can help them recover from that and still have confidence in what they’re doing.

00;34;15;00 – 00;34;36;16
Speaker 2
So that’s been huge. That’s the end result. Before we get there, we need to train on approvals and how to submit cases. We do this whole setup of their brackets, right? We we ask bracket reps to send us bracket inventory, and we configure the platform to that doctor’s brackets so they can pick and choose and mix and match their brackets.

00;34;36;16 – 00;34;46;17
Speaker 2
They can go sub gingival. They can invert. They can do all these tricks smile arcs and whatever they want to do with with the brackets, we set all that up for them.

00;34;46;17 – 00;34;50;20
Speaker 1
All right. Are there any case studies or success stories that stick out in your mind?

00;34;50;20 – 00;34;59;08
Speaker 2
Yeah, there’s a few. There’s a few. So am I okay naming names on this podcast for doctors?

00;34;59;14 – 00;35;04;17
Speaker 1
It’s fine with me.

00;35;04;20 – 00;35;25;27
Speaker 2
So, so an interesting case study is, Doctor Ed Lin, in Wisconsin. He’s, pretty well known, and, he uses. Did I, he has a a unique way of using it with his other systems that he has in place, but he does a lot of, a lot of Jim’s. I and he has been he was an early adopter.

00;35;26;00 – 00;35;45;20
Speaker 2
I remember having a conversation with him. He had signed up. We had probably released Jim’s I and I think we’re six months old at the time having a conversation with him. He’s going, Ryan, you should be doing this. And this and this and this and this. And I’m like, Ed, we’ve only been open for six months.

00;35;45;22 – 00;36;08;02
Speaker 2
We’ll get there, we’ll get there. And he’s like, you’ve only done this. We’ve only. And he suddenly became the most patient guy with our weaknesses when he realized we had done so much in just six months. So yeah. Yeah, he’s a great, great doctor, great advocate for us. So another example is Brendan Martin. He’s located, near Sacramento.

00;36;08;04 – 00;36;33;20
Speaker 2
Another great case study. He has he’s been a big advocate for DBS. I, he’s doing a lot with custom bases, actually, before we even released our signature series, he was he he’s been doing custom bases on his own. And, we actually have a podcast of or, one of our study club podcasts, on our support website with him kind of showing how he does that.

00;36;33;23 – 00;37;09;25
Speaker 2
And, so that’s, that’s a cool story as well. And, there’s one other I’ll share with you. I won’t share his name because it’s it’s a really, really good story, but I don’t want to, I don’t want to throw anybody under the bus. So, Sorry. So I got a call one day from the, from the from the president of one of the bracket companies, and, excuse me, not from the president of the company, but is is like national sales director, and he was telling a story about the president going to visit a doctor of ours.

00;37;09;27 – 00;37;34;24
Speaker 2
And as the story goes, he he went to visit him. He’s a pretty high volume doctor. And he’s visiting him. And the doctor tells him, you know what? The combination of your brackets with Dibbs AI has changed my practice. And he’s like, really? Tell me more. And he. And he proceeded to tell him, how did I he’s allowed him to delegate and become more efficient.

00;37;34;24 – 00;37;56;17
Speaker 2
And he’s got some of his life back, and he’s making more money and he doesn’t have the staffing issue and blah, blah, blah. Right. So he’s talking about these benefits and and then he shares the story about how his aligner company, the president of the aligner company, came to visit this doctor because they noticed a decrease in the amount of liners he was ordering.

00;37;56;19 – 00;38;19;26
Speaker 2
And they’re going, what’s going on, doctor? So, so interestingly enough, this is one of the the biggest, you know, there’s that like the top three aligner companies. It was one of those. And the and the president comes to the office and goes tell me more. He’s learning what’s happening. And the doctor proceeds to share with them, hey, those brackets with Gibbs, I, I’m getting more efficient treatment.

00;38;19;29 – 00;38;41;16
Speaker 2
My patients are finishing faster. I’m getting more predictable returns, than I am with the aligner. So I’ve shifted my business back towards brackets. That used to be much more aligner focused, and now it’s switched back to brackets and wires. And, so, you know, from my perspective, I just adore stories like that. I think that is amazing.

00;38;41;16 – 00;38;52;22
Speaker 2
And, so needless to say, we are on the radar. Maybe not in a good way with one of the top aligner companies, but but I think it was totally worth it. Yeah, I think it was totally worth it.

00;38;52;26 – 00;38;56;13
Speaker 1
Are there any new innovations coming down the pipeline that you want to talk about?

00;38;56;13 – 00;39;23;21
Speaker 2
Yeah. Well, I spoke just really briefly about, biomechanics and that is, that is the focus, for our investment dollars right now, there’s, there are a lot of opportunities with software and especially where we are, the the digital side of orthodontics is moving so quickly. It’s it’s a very exciting time. It’s a very busy time.

00;39;23;21 – 00;39;41;00
Speaker 2
It’s sometimes hard to prioritize where we should spend our investment, our development investment dollars. But biomechanics, we are we are all in on for this year, and that’s that’s hopefully we’ll be able to start seeing the results of that as we get into the late fall.

00;39;41;00 – 00;39;46;05
Speaker 1
All right, Ryan, if someone wants to learn more about dibs, I or maybe they’re on the fence, where should they go? Yeah.

00;39;46;05 – 00;40;06;15
Speaker 2
So our website dibs. Eye.com. You can literally book a an appointment there. There’s also a demo video if you don’t want to interact with one of our sales team yet, but would like to just see a video. You’re welcome to request one there and we’ll email you the link. So that’s a great way to get started.

00;40;06;15 – 00;40;41;16
Speaker 2
There’s, there’s some Q&A and there’s other information there on the website. But that’s where I would direct you. I would also, you know, and invite doctors to ask, ask around. I know that there’s chatter on Facebook forums and in, in personal study clubs where there’s a lot of doctors that have had exposure to AI and, feel free to ask how their experience has been and, we’re not perfect and some doctors have stopped using us, but most, especially since we implemented on site training.

00;40;41;18 – 00;40;50;20
Speaker 2
We’re we’re right around that 95% retention rate right there for those that experience the on site training. So and that started about a year and a half ago.

00;40;50;23 – 00;40;58;12
Speaker 1
Great. Ryan, thanks for your time. I learned a ton about the whole this whole part of orthodontics today. So I’m sure doctors will love to hear it.

00;40;58;16 – 00;41;00;10
Speaker 2
Okay. Well, my my pleasure.

00;41;00;13 – 00;41;03;09
Speaker 1
I’m looking forward to hearing about the what new innovations in the future.

00;41;03;09 – 00;41;07;13
Speaker 2
Well, thanks, Richie, I appreciate it. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. This has been fun.

00;41;07;15 – 00;41;08;13
Speaker 1
You got to take it easy.

00;41;08;14 – 00;41;10;13
Speaker 2
Thank you. Take care.