Kiroku Co-Founders Hannah Burrow and Jay Shah spoke to Laura Hills from Practice Plan about how Kiroku came to be and how AI is evolving and can be used in Dentistry.

You can listen to the entire conversation here, or read below for a transcript.

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Laura: Hi, so welcome to BODCAST. I'm Laura from Practice Plan and today I'm joined by Hannah and Jay from Kiroku. And so we're just going to discuss how AI affects dentistry. So guys, do you want to just tell us about the company and how it all began?

Hannah: Firstly, thank you for having us. I'm Hannah, dentist by background, graduated from Bristol about 10 years ago, worked in several different roles within dentistry.

I was surprised with how much of your time you spend writing notes. And so was trying to explore if there was something that I could do about it. Luckily met Jay.

Jay: My background is quite different from Hannah's, I'm not a dentist. My background is in computer science and AI. So I spent a number of years researching AI and I guess how you can apply it to the world, which we're seeing now.

Then about six or seven years ago, we joined an accelerator program and that's kind of where I met Hannah and I learned about the world of dentistry.

I learned how painful it is to do certain things in dentistry, which I was unaware of. One is obviously note taking. Then Hannah kind of exposed me to that whole side of the world and we started Kiroku.

Hannah: Kiroku just very broadly, we create software for dentists to help streamline record keeping. We like to think that we make the job of a dentist easier by just removing all of the adjuncts. They can actually just focus on the patient interaction.

And we do that through a variety of different products, note taking being one major one, but we also help with clinical letters and things that you might have to send out to other clinicians or patients.

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Laura: Can you tell us a little bit about how the system works?  

Hannah: So the system runs in your web browser, separate to the practice management system. This doesn't have to be a practice wide decision. You can individually make the decision that you'd like to start using Kiroku yourself.

You can just sign up for an account online and you can get started very, very quickly. It's a separate screen to your practice management system, but you would open up the Kiroku screen. It would just guide you through a workflow, which helps you enter the information in a really simple way.

You're clicking buttons, and the system has got a lot intelligence built into it, which makes certain suggestions for you. So understanding that actually, if you've recorded the patient's got pain, you might be asking a series of follow up questions. So it can make these sort of real time suggestions for you during the appointment.

But then what's also really exciting is we kind of deploy AI to then optimise these templates for the individual over time. So it's just getting better and better and more efficient to that individual the more they use it.  

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Laura: We touched upon it slightly anyway, but so what would you say the main benefits are for dental practices?

Jay: So I'd say there's three. One is for the clinician themselves, it's speed. It just helps them write the notes faster. Let's say you spend 10 minutes writing notes normally for an appointment, with our system it would be about 2 or 3.

The second benefit is just thorough notes. It actually allows you to write more with less time. So your notes are a bit more thorough, it's more accurate to what actually happened, and it's easier to do.

The third thing is actually just better patient care. You can focus on your patient. So I'll say it's a combination of those three.

But at the end of the day, it's just kind of better quality of life for the dentist, for the practitioner, which obviously leads to a better practice overall.

Hannah: And hopefully for the patient as well, because if you've got a dentist who's trying to type up things as they're going through it, you're getting so much less engagement naturally, if they can focus on that patient interaction that's fab.

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Laura: Do you find people are nervous using AI tools?

Hannah: I think we can answer that kind of specific to Kiroku and then outside of Kiroku.

I'd say, specific to Kiroku, that it's not really, at least it's not anything that we hear that people are concerned about AI. Just because of the way we've built it, we've built it in a way where the clinician has got complete control.

Whereas, I think, when you consider AI outside of dentistry, and Jay, I'll pass this one on to you, but like, these kind of broad affairs around AI, you do.  

Jay: Yeah, I was gonna say, within Kiroku, we actually get the opposite, where people are drawn to it because of the AI. I think it's more forward thinking dentists thinking that way.

Outside of dental AI, I guess people are always scared of the unknown. And they're scared of some change, right? And right now, at least in my opinion, AI is change. It's like the biggest change we're gonna go through at the moment.

So I think when there's a fear of unknown, fear of change, and a fear of potentially losing jobs, there is natural fear.

But I think there's also the optimistic side of what you AI and how it can just make your life so much better, which is important.

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Laura: Do you think AI is making a positive impact on dentistry?

Hannah: Yeah, definitely. And there's loads of really cool companies doing like awesome stuff.

You know, you can diagnose things better. You can do the same amount of work in less time. They currently are all kind of fairly sort of standard, like standalone companies.

I think it'll be really exciting when all these different technologies kind of link together. It'll make the experience even better.

I think already there's really great examples that are being picked up in dentistry. Even over the last two years, we've noticed a kind of step change in people's opinion towards stuff.

Jay: And I'd say it's just a start. I think it's exciting. Like we're literally at the start of what AI can do within dentistry. It's just going to increase really rapid right now.

Hannah: I mean, even right now, like we've got two features that are in beta that just kind of launched internally to some of our customers. The fact that we're like, we're iterating that fast.

I'm sure the same is true as so many different AI companies, the speed at which things are kind of accelerating. It's going a bit bananas.

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Laura: Finally then, so if anyone's interested, what would you say to them?

Jay: I'd say the first thing is if you're interested in trying Kiroku, just sign up. It takes two or three minutes to get started. You can sign up yourself, you don't need to be sold onto it, you don't need your practice's, I guess, consent, it's for the individual dentist right now.

So all you need to do is go on our website and try it out yourself. You'll see a button that just says try for free.

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BODCAST is the business of dentistry podcast, brought to you by Practice Plan. BODCAST delivers the best business advice, real life stories, and practical hints and tips to make your practice a more profitable and sustainable business. Listen to more Bodcasts from Practice Plan.