11 January 2023

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MouthWatch 2022 Teledentistry Innovation Awards

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MouthWatch recently recognized five teledentistry pioneers during its fifth annual Teledentistry Innovation Awards, affectionately known as the “Tellies.”

The awards were presented during an invitation-only live event hosted during the Greater New York Dental Meeting. MouthWatch CEO and founder Brant Herman said the recipients represent outstanding examples of how teledentistry is rapidly moving beyond an emergency triage role and becoming a core technology for improving access to care and wide range of patient outcomes.

For the fifth consecutive year, the purpose of the Tellie Awards was two-fold:

1. Highlight the many ways that teledentistry is being implemented across a broad spectrum of oral health care, including dental hygiene, private practice, education, public health, and organizational settings.
2. 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 to improve the state of oral health across the country.

The five 2022 Tellie Awards winners and their respective categories include:

• Tiffany Grant, RDH | Dental Hygiene: As CEO of Access Teledentistry, Grant teaches providers how to improve care through teledentistry and consults with associations, dental schools and non-profits. She started her teledentistry career at the first Missouri pilot program serving schools, nursing homes and FQHCs. Grant recently added teledentistry to her private practice setting to expand its hygiene hours.
• Dr. Jin Xiao | Dentist: Dr. Xiao is faculty at the University of Rochester Medical Center and authored an extensive teledentistry study funded by the NIH incorporating store and forward and live video to provide dental exams. Xiao is expanding the possibilities of teledentistry by combining it with artificial intelligence.
• Fones School of Dental Hygiene, University of Bridgeport | Education: Under the guidance of Dr. Jennifer Boyce, associate director of clinical affairs, the school uses teledentistry to enable students to provide free dental care to children, individuals who are homeless, senior citizens, veterans and pregnant women. The school plans to make teledentistry and mobile dentistry a clinical rotation experience for all second-year students. Additionally, the school has developed a program that educates pregnant women on their heightened risk for oral health problems while providing on-site treatments to those in need.
• Floss and Gloss | Public Health: Teledentistry has been a pivotal part of The Floss and Gloss Program from the Purchase District Health Department in Paducah, Kentucky. Launched in 2019, and under the direction of Program Manager Leah Smothers, RDH, the Floss and Gloss program provides children with access to oral care in 38 different schools in Western Kentucky. This year, the teledentistry program will have two dentists and will introduce SDF treatments for children in a pilot program to treat tooth sensitivity and slow tooth decay.
• Apple Tree Dental | Organization: This innovative non-profit’s mission is to overcome barriers to oral health. Dr. Jennifer Boyce, associate director of clinical affairs, was instrumental in incorporating teledentistry to help Appletree Dental achieve that mission.

Teledentistry played a crucial role in their mid-pandemic projects that targeted triaging urgent dental concerns and in now a part of daily care at Apple Tree. Using teledentistry for triage saves patients time, money, missed work time and the need to arrange for childcare while freeing up precious chair time to deliver treatment.

Learn more about the company at: https://www.mouthwatch.com/