With its newest features, the remote monitoring platform evolves into a patient management system that supports the treatment coordinator and sees the patient through every moment of its interaction with the practice.

By Alison Werner

Grin launched in 2020 as a remote monitoring platform, but in 2023, it has evolved into a complete patient management system. Whether a patient first interacts with the practice virtually or in-office, Grin can be there from the start. The platform features an asynchronous remote consultation feature giving the practice a pre-treatment touchpoint. But as founder and CEO Adam Schulhof, DMD, points out, the platform can be used just as successfully for in-office consults.

With Grin’s new AI Records app, a dedicated Grin mobile app account for the practice, treatment coordinators (TCs) need no longer navigate a DSLR camera or worry about a foggy mirror or retractors to get good patient pictures. Instead, they can use an iPhone and an attached Grin scope to take a 34-second Grin scan. The platform’s AI then automatically pulls out the best five intraoral photos doctors need. TCs can then remove the scope and shoot the three facial photos and upload it all into Grin. This is then uploaded right into the practice management system. The TC then has the scan review, a dynamic video, rather than just still images, to present treatment to the prospective patient and parent. A benefit of the video presentation: The TC can share the video with the patient/parent.

This functionality, according to Schulhof, is a practice differentiator. Patients/parents see from the get-go that the practice is using technology to create ease in their experience. And from there, TCs can explain how the use of this technology will streamline their treatment experience: “If you sign up with our practice, you’re not going to be driving in every 4 weeks to see us because we have this connection. It’s in your phone. We will be checking on you. For appointments where you need to come in, you will come in so we can do our magic. But for the appointments that you don’t need to come in for, we’re not going to make you sit in traffic and look for parking.”

In addition to using the Grin platform to communicate with patients about treatment progress and appointments, the practice can also use it to communicate with patients about finances. The TC can send a financial review video shot via the Grin mobile patient app to the patient/parent. To create this video, the TC opens a software like OrthoFi and shoots the video via Grin walking the patient/parent through the screens. The video even includes a bubble in the corner showing the TC as they explain.

As Grin has grown as a patient communication app, the company saw how practices were having to switch between Grin and its scheduling software to schedule appointments. To streamline this, Grin announced its integration with the Dolphin management software earlier this year. The integration allows for scheduling and charting interoperability, with eventual imaging integrations. According to Grin founder and COO Pamela Oren-Artzi, practices that used Dolphin prior to adopting Grin can seamlessly invite patients to use the Grin platform as well.

On the patient communication side, the Grin platform has also expanded its tools related to hygiene. Grin already had tools to diagnose and treat patients’ oral hygiene. But now it has added tools to educate and enforce better oral care practices via educational tutorials that the practice can share directly through the Grin app with the patient. So when a bonding appointment runs long and there isn’t enough time to do hygiene instruction, the practice can push different video tutorials to the patient to fill in the gap. What’s more, the doctor can use the Grin platform, clicking on a button, to highlight where patients brush well or not, or where they have plaque, tartar, inflammation, or gum recession. The doctor or team member can then communicate with the patient via the Grin app, and document that communication to mitigate risk, about how they are doing and ensure better treatment outcomes.

As Grin evolves as a patient management system, it is also evolving as an in-office communication platform. Staff members can now tag each other or the doctor in a patient’s record in the Grin platform to assign tasks and ask follow-up questions.

As Schulhof sums it up, “[Grin] is about a lot more than monitoring. This is really about changing the way we interact, we communicate, and we deal with our patients—and always to their benefit. But, at the same time, we’ve actually built something that benefits the patient as much as it does the practice.”OP