Learn about three software platforms that showcase the best of what dental AI has to offer.
Artificial intelligence has arrived in the dental practice. From software that elevates every appointment to tools that streamline administrative workflows, dental teams are increasingly looking to AI to handle the most repetitive, time-consuming aspects of the job. For an industry contending with unprecedented staffing challenges and operational demands, AI offers practical solutions that alleviate pressure, reduce risk and, ultimately, let providers devote more time to taking care of patients. Here’s a look at three platforms leading the way.
WEAVE: COMMUNICATION TOOLS THAT CLOSE THE GAP
When practices lose revenue, it rarely comes down to one easy-to-pinpoint moment. More often, it’s the sum of many missed opportunities – an unanswered call here, an unscheduled treatment there – that add up to a collective drain on the practice. Weave, a patient communication and engagement platform with AI capabilities, offers a solution.
“Most practices don’t have a demand problem – they have an operational problem,” said Marcus Bertilson, Weave’s chief operating officer. Weave addresses this by unifying communication, scheduling, payments and patient engagement into a single system, with AI embedded throughout to manage the repetitive, daily tasks that slow down front-desk staff. “Rather than depending on staff to keep pace with volume,” Bertilson explained, “the platform delivers consistency at scale.”
He points to the example of Sonrisa Dental – a two-person practice that uses Weave to automate reminders, handle two-way texting and consolidate tools that once required separate solutions. In the words of practice owner Philip Debossu, DDS, “Weave was quickly taking over the roles of other software that we employed, from marketing to payments. The convenience of having it all in one platform allows us to be so flexible.” The software’s scalability means practices of any size can similarly recover lost revenue, fill schedules more reliably, and reduce administrative burdens – even as their needs evolve.
With the latest updates to its Call Intelligence tool, Weave can now identify unscheduled patients, track appointment recovery and generate call summaries directly within existing practice management systems. In a time when patients increasingly expect convenience, “every missed call or overlooked follow-up now carries a greater cost for practice owners,” Bertilson said. Weave provides a clear way to close these gaps and maintain a competitive edge.
PEARL: A SMARTER PRACTICE, FROM THE OPERATORY TO THE FRONT DESK
Pearl occupies a unique category within dental AI solutions. Rather than addressing one workflow, Pearl offers a growing suite of AI-powered products designed to remove friction across the entire practice.
It starts with Second Opinion – Pearl’s FDA-cleared AI for real-time pathology detection. The software uncovers subtle signs of dental disease on 2D and 3D X-rays, with up to a 94% accuracy rate. Second Opinion is natively embedded in over 40 imaging systems, meaning its features can be activated with the click of a button inside the software teams already use every day. Chairside, the application also visually segments areas of concern in color, presenting oral health conditions to patients in a way traditional X-rays never could.
“When patients can actually see what the clinician is seeing, they have the time and clarity to ask the questions they need in order to accept treatment,” said Sheela Roth, RDH, BS, Pearl’s director of clinical operations. “And when patients accept dentistry earlier in the process, it’s less invasive, less expensive and outcomes are better.”
Pearl’s Practice Intelligence translates Second Opinion’s diagnostic insights into scheduling opportunities. Each time a patient books an appointment, the platform reviews up to 18 months of previous X-rays and cross-references their chart, flagging treatment that was recommended but never completed and surfacing findings that may not have made it into the record at all. “You’re bringing radiographic insights directly into the patient management system,” Roth said. Practice Intelligence even creates provider-specific daily roadmaps, so each clinician knows what to look for before the patient walks in the door.
With Pearl, in addition to achieving substantial time savings, providers also have greater peace of mind. “I cannot even function in my day without it,” one clinician told Roth, admitting that he now finds it difficult to imagine diagnosing unassisted. “It’s just so much easier on my eyes, easier with my patients. I have the ability to take a deep breath now, knowing Pearl is always operating in the background.” As Roth noted, Pearl’s ultimate benefit is the bandwidth it gives providers: “With these types of efficiencies – reading X-rays, auditing charts, verifying insurance – what we’re really doing is buying back time you can now spend with your patient.”
BOLA AI: APPOINTMENT DOCUMENTATION ON AUTOPILOT
Completing clinical notes, charts and other appointment-related documentation takes up a disproportionate amount of time for dental teams. These tasks frequently are relegated to the gaps between patient visits or after-work hours, leading to lost production time, inconsistent records and provider burnout.
Bola AI was built to address these challenges. According to founder and CEO Rushi Ganmukhi, the platform was designed around a simple idea: “Let providers focus on patient care, not paperwork.” Bola’s voice-AI captures patient conversations in real time and automatically generates structured notes and charts that integrate seamlessly with practice management systems. To date, the software has already supported the creation of over nine million clinical notes for practices nationwide.
Dental practices using Bola gain significant advantages each day. According to Bola, many practices report saving more than 20 minutes per provider daily from the platform’s perio workflows alone, while some say they’ve experienced up to a 77% increase in perio-related treatments, driven by more thorough, consistent exam documentation. One multilocation practice also saw Bola reduce daily charting time by over an hour while improving documentation consistency across locations.
Though less quantifiable, there’s another, arguably more important benefit to implementing Bola AI. “Providers learn to focus on the patient conversation naturally, without needing to structure their speech for documentation,” Ganmukhi explained. “This creates a more human, patient-centered interaction.” Like all the best AI solutions, adopting Bola takes a small change in workflow, but makes a significant difference – in the quality of care patients receive and the daily lives of the dental professionals delivering it.
THE BIGGER PICTURE
Every dental AI solution takes a different approach, but they all give practices more of the resource that’s always in shortest supply: time. And while AI can never replace the human relationships at the heart of dentistry, it’s proving remarkably capable at helping providers build and strengthen them.
