e-DENTECH
Reimagining Oral Consultations

Until recently, a routine visit to the dentist implied a patient physically having to be present at the clinic, or, in rare cases, transporting the dentist to the patient. However, for specific populations like the dependent elderly, disabled people, and prison inmates, even a simple dental checkup meets a certain level of distress. Concerns like transportation costs, difficulties in scheduling appointments due to the process being time-consuming, and doctors who opt for being present in their practice, complicate institutionalized people’s access to a regular or annual dental consultation. Moreover, for treating patients with comorbidities, dentists require precise information about these conditions and the first appointment is often one for consultation purposes only. Thus, oral health remains an important public health issue to tackle.

Against this challenging backdrop, e-DENTECH believes that telemedicine could transcend various barriers in healthcare services and ensure individuals with access to medical care. Started in 2013 as a public research project coordinated by the University Hospital of Montpellier and the University of Montpellier, e-DENT is today a comprehensive teledentistry solution. Since 2015, e-DENTECH is facilitating oral consultations for residents of medical-social establishments and nursing homes without them having to visit the dentist’s office.

With COVID-19 hitting hard across the globe, e-DENT has proven to be a boon in facilitating oral consultations for patients remotely. This specific context has proven once more that the e-DENT approach - of having trained professionals already inside the facilities to perform the data collection protocol - is the only viable solution to reduce contamination risks.

e-DENTECH’s flagship solution, e-DENT addresses the various constraints faced by the different stakeholders involved in the diagnosis process—the quality of the teleconsultation, the time required to perform the teleconsultation, comfort, user experience, acceptability. With an easy deployment and implementation process, e-DENT helps clients seamlessly integrate teledentistry into their dayto- day processes. “Our scientifically validated solution helps health professionals assess a person’s dental care requirements through remote diagnostics, real actionable information for providing personalized care,” explains Roland Petcu, COO of e-DENTECH.

The e-DENT solution is a mix of 5 interrelated services and products: training, implementation and support services, software and equipment, which ensure that teledentistry is successful and sustainable. The e-DENT Visit software is used by the nurse or auxiliary nurse to collect patient data even while offline, eliminating the challenges posed by bad internet connections or its overall absence while administering the protocol. After the dentist’s diagnosis, the patient reports are used by healthcare professionals and the establishment’s medical team to prepare the next step. By improving coordination among the professionals involved in a person’s dental care journey, e-DENT delivers better patient experience, health status follow-up and overall quality of life.

The e-DENT Platform includes a bundle of services required for maintaining activity continuity. It consists of on-line support and the server application, compliant with French and EU regulations, which manages the users’ access rights, the secured transfer and storage of the collected data.

e-DENTECH’s multidisciplinary team analyzes the potential blind spots in a client’s project and provides solutions to overcome them while deploying the e-DENT solution. e-DENT Consulting is an implementation methodology, continuously improved to ensure the project’s success and reduce implementation time. From accepting an order to “Go Live” it takes as low as 12 days, mostly for fulfilling the prerequisites such as preparing consent forms, training, equipment purchasing and setting up the client’s project team. Another key feature of e-DENT is the one-day training module, which educates nurses or auxiliary nurses to use the intraoral camera and the e-DENT Visit software. e-DENT Equipment includes the specific devices required for optimal results: intraoral camera, a laptop, a foot pedal, and the required connection cables and accessories.

Petcu narrates how, before working with e-DENTECH, an autism center had to schedule general anesthesia for their residents every two years. The procedure allowed them to receive a regular dental consultation. With the e-DENT solution, 47 out of their 49 residents were able to have dental checkups every 6 or 12 months according to their needs, done in the comfort of the center, which is also their home, and by a nurse with whom they interact regularly.

Committed to bringing change in teledentistry, e-DENTECH is geared towards accelerating e-DENT’s adoption and implementation with a busy year ahead. After the solution’s successful implementation in over 100 sites in France and a successful pilot in Singapore currently in the expansion phase, e-DENTECH is in the position of having a similar track record internationally. Furthermore, the company is involved in various pilots in medical areas closely related to oral health using the e-DENT solution and only minimal equipment additions.