HBI Deals+Insights / HR, Culture and Training

Dentistry’s digital future — HBI 2024

At a fascinating HBI 2024 workshop on transforming the dental services industry, innovators outlined bold new business models designed to improve access to affordable, high-quality oral care for millions across Europe.

The workshop, led by dental implant manufacturer Straumann Group, showcased pioneering approaches from disruptive dental service organisations (DSOs), including the UK’s myDentist, and Sweden’s Aqua Dental.

The session identified three major obstacles impeding excellence in dentistry today: fear and discomfort around procedures, lack of time for appointments amidst busy modern lifestyles, and the prohibitively high costs of many treatments.

DSOs have long struggled to overcome these barriers. Aqua Dental and myDentist have, however, managed to disrupt the traditional dental services ecosystem through new strategies that leverage economies of scale, digitisation, standardised and affordable pricing, convenient ‘retail-like’ locations, and robust training models for their dentists.

Meeting pent-up demand for affordable dentistry at scale

Nilesh Pandya, the CEO of myDentist, told the conference that the company aims to deliver “genuinely affordable private dentistry” through nationwide cost leadership and scale across its 530+ practices. They have invested heavily in large, state-of-the-art clinics strategically situated in high foot-traffic locations, including high streets and retail parks, to make it easier for patients to access their clinics.

“There is a clear market opportunity for affordable dentistry with significant unmet demand,” Pandya said.

To attract price-conscious patients, myDentist has implemented transparent and accessible pricing structures, flexible payment options like financing, convenient appointment times that extend beyond the typical 9-to-5 to include evenings and weekends, and a full range of general and cosmetic treatments under one roof.

At the same time, the company focuses on creating an appealing environment and robust support system for dentists. This includes a dedicated training academy, clinical support services including the “largest mentorship team in UK dentistry” (according to Pandya) with over 300 mentors, an independent clinical advisory board, and flexibility for clinicians to build their desired careers.

The investments in transforming myDentist’s physical footprint have already delivered over 20% ROI in year 3, and are projected to reach 30% ROI within five years, as newly renovated clinics ramp up. Streamlined, fully digital patient pathways from booking to payment processing have, according to myDentist, enhanced the seamless customer experience.

“Our origins were fundamentally NHS-based” Pandya explained. “We did not have the fear of cannibalising our private revenue.” This afforded myDentist the opportunity to be more price-aggressive in their pursuit of private customers, as they had a strong business to develop upon.

To sustain its growth, myDentist has robust pipelines for staffing, including partnerships to increase international licensing exam capacity and a leading Indian dental school partnership. Pandya told HBI 2024 that myDentist is now the largest employer of newly qualified dentists in the UK.

Overcoming ‘Dental Deserts’

While the UK grapples with driving down costs and addressing more of its untapped domestic market, Sweden faces an additional challenge — a severe shortage of dentists in rural areas, where many residents must travel hundreds of miles to access basic services.

Aqua Dental has emerged as a bold disruptor, populating this wasteland of “dental deserts” through a rapid expansion of modern, consumer-friendly clinics. The clinics are intentionally designed to increase availability and reduce patient disruption, avoidance, and anxiety.

“There are rural areas where people cannot find access to services and have to travel from the far north to Stockholm for help,” said Niklas Virta, CEO of Aqua Dental, addressing the workshop session.

Aqua Dental draws heavy inspiration from customer experience leaders in hospitality, retail and other sectors outside of dentistry to create a differentiated, comfortable “boutique hotel” or “spa-like” vibe for its clinics. The openness to cross-industry learning stems from the fact that Aqua’s founders themselves come from beyond the dental world.

“We were not limited by how things are supposed to work in dentistry,” said Virta at HBI 2024. He outlined to the conference how Aqua Dental seeks inspiration from diverse sources, from Olympic athletes (Tokyo 2020 pole-vault gold medallist Armando Duplantis is a collaborative partner) to luxury hotels. The objective, according to Virta, was to create the “best possible patient experience and workplace culture.”

Aqua Dental worked from day one to ensure that digital ecosystems seamlessly integrate the full patient journey from online booking and video consults to payment processing on the back end. Patients can make appointments 24/7, even on holidays — “365 days a year”, according to Virta, through the online platform. Transparent pricing and flexible financing options mimic the “Uber-like” seamlessness of other digital-first businesses.

Most important to their success, Aqua Dental has placed strong emphasis on creating the right workplace culture, and a better and more accessible environment for their patients. 

We discussed this with Niklas Virta the week after the HBI conference.

“It all started with a bad patient experience for my brother, the founder,” Virta shared. “He tried booking an appointment but struggled to even get through the door at a dentist’s office. We decided to create the type of dental experience we would want.”

The journey began with a series of ‘challenge’ questions, the sort that often comes best from a sector outsider:

“We asked, why do clinics have to look like this? Most people within the industry said, ‘it just is this way within dentistry’. We kept drilling and asking ‘is it [due to] clinical requirements, or some other requirements?’ and most of the answers were ‘no’. We said, okay. Let’s change it.

“Why don’t we look at the hotel industry or retail industry, industries where the customer is really what you live for and the customer experience is crucial to what you do?

“… We want to reach everyone as a customer, knowing that you are a patient, but you are also a paying customer, and you choose to pay for our services.”

Aqua Dental began to recruit its customer-facing staff from the hospitality sector, to bring in people experienced in delivering stronger customer experiences. While this change saw Aqua Dental delivering improved customer interactions, there were still training and development challenges to overcome.

“We started taking in people from the hotel industry, such as receptionists. Of course, they didn’t know the Journal system and PMS system. We had to teach them that. But what they did know was how you give a perfect customer experience.”

This ‘outsider’ perspective has found its way into the business’ internal culture and external branding. This brand, articulated by the company via their mantra as ‘Aqua Rebels’, has proven key to Aqua Dental’s growth.

Virta wore a bright yellow Aqua Dental branded suit to the HBI conference, a symbolic display of Aqua Dental’s “rebel” culture that challenges traditional dental norms. He told HBI that he did this because no individual at Aqua Dental is more important than the application of this disruptor, patient-focused mentality. He noted that he did not want to ‘disappoint’ the Aqua Dental team back in Sweden by wearing a suit like everybody else.

While driving strong brand recognition and promoting a critical differentiation from sector competitors, with the approach helping the disruptor-DSO grow at pace, Virta says that Aqua Dental is highly conscious of the need to maintain that culture in the face of strong growth.

“We plan to double the company again in the next two years, mainly through greenfield establishments of new clinics,” said Virta. “But we will never compromise our DNA and culture, as that’s what makes us unique.”

This focus on strong internal DNA, plus a focus on employee care and training and development opportunities, are key to Aqua Dental’s plan to develop practices in rural areas where other DSOs have either refused to enter, or have struggled to retain dental staff. By providing their dentists with better pastoral support and promoting opportunities outside of cities, the company has been able to open a series of rural clinics in underserved communities.

Virta said: ““We work actively to add resources and doctors to rural areas and have been quite successful in that – we believe we can eliminate the queues in the dental system. For example, we managed to get one dentist [where] before he didn’t want to [move rurally], because he felt that you only could work in the public system. He didn’t want to work within that system because [he felt] they do not value their employees. But now, Aqua Dental was an option. We got another from Gothenburg West, who wanted to be closer to nature. These are just two examples of how we have successfully managed to add resources to rural areas.”

Digitalisation to drive efficiencies and superior patient experiences

While their models differ, both myDentist and Aqua Dental are aggressively digitalising nearly every aspect of the patient journey and clinician experience to fuel greater efficiencies, insights, and promote a more seamless service.

At myDentist, digital workflows span the full patient lifecycle from online booking and payments, to data-driven marketing for new patient acquisition, suggesting optimised treatment plans through solutions like Straumann’s coDiagnostiX, and streamlining supply chains. Over 400 scanner units have already been deployed across the network, with 500 projected by year-end.

“We are seeing technology now driving longer-term conversations by better surfacing potential care needs,” Nilesh Pandya told the HBI conference. “For example, scanners can show where issues are and where treatment may be beneficial down-the-road. This drives conversion into higher-value services.”

Aqua Dental has spent five years building a full digital ecosystem encompassing the entire patient journey. This includes online booking through its “Hotels.com for dentistry” platform, video dentistry consultations, integrated payments, and flexible financing.

Both DSOs view the digitalisation of workflows and experiences as mission-critical for acquiring and retaining patients accustomed to the frictionless simplicity of consumer technologies in other areas of their lives.

While taking different approaches, the innovative business models showcased at HBI 2024 reflect an industry evolving to make dentistry more affordable, accessible and appealing to dentists and patients alike.

Their strategies point toward addressing the estimated 50% of the European market that has remained untapped, due to the prior stated barriers of cost, fear and patient inconvenience.

Niklas Virta bluntly stated Aqua Dental’s mantra, as a conference call-to-action: ”Be the revolution, or you will be left behind”. It was clear at HBI 2024 that the digitalisation and customer care revolution is officially underway in Europe.

Click here to view a recording of the session.

We would welcome your thoughts on this story. Email your views to Chris O'Donnell or call 0207 183 3779.