Dental News - Interview: “Dentists can have much better conversations with patients”

Kristin Hübner, DTI

Sun. 20. November 2016

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Aiming to help patients suffering from dental anxiety, Danish start-up Cope it introduced a digital anxiety treatment tool in June 2014. In the last two years, much has happened, Cope it CEO Esben Toftdahl Nielsen told Dental Tribune Online in an interview. In 2015, the digital tool was named Product of the Year by the organisers of Danish dental exhibition SCANDEFA in Copenhagen. This year, the company redirected its focus from giving practitioners insights into patients with dental anxiety towards a broader approach of using data intelligence for generally improving patients’ dental experiences too.

Dental Tribune Online: The Cope it clinic software is aimed at helping patients with dental anxiety. What has the feedback from patients and practitioners been?
Esben Toftdahl Nielsen: It has been well received by both dentists and patients. The information acquired through the solution has proved invaluable for dentists, as before the patient even sets foot in the surgery room, the practitioner has a very good idea of his or her core needs and how his or her treatment can be personalised. Furthermore, we have seen that patients who are just slightly anxious have felt that their dentist better understands them because of the advanced mental profile of the patient obtained via the software. This results in better care for patients, as well as increased treatment uptake.

How did the company develop, and what has your experience as young entrepreneurs been?
We launched the solution in Denmark in 2014. Since then, we have expanded to the UK, Hungary and Australia in collaboration with great partners. In the rest of the world, we provide the solution along with an online training course.

Our key challenge as a start-up company has been to gain access to prospective customers. Dentists have full schedules and focus their attention on their patients—as they should. Our job has been to make our offering appealing to dentists. We do so in collaboration with our partners in the industry, as well as via our blog—which has a growing audience.

Furthermore, we changed the name of the software to “PI Dental” just a few months ago. It stands for “Patient insight—for dental clinics”. Our purpose was to create a stronger link to the dental community with a solution with a dentistry-related name.

You also expanded the use of the tool to gain more general patient insight.
The adjustment to our offering was driven by customer demand. Quite quickly, our customers asked us whether we could make patient profiles that did not only focus on identifying patients with dental anxiety, that is they desired a more comprehensive dental assessment of the patient, thereby making the solution even more useful. This is now a core part of PI Dental as well. The patient profile covers two dimensions: needs and desires, and treatment barriers. With this information, dentists can have much better conversations with patients.

Your company actively uses social media to keep customers and clients up to date. Why do you think that is important today?
As mentioned earlier, dentists have a tight treatment schedule and spend the majority of their time with patients. For that reason, we communicate our message to dentists via several channels and, among those, online channels are a great means of communication today. We focus mainly on our blog, which provides the latest insights into our work.

Thank you very much for the interview.

More information about the PI Dental solution can be found at www.copeit.com.

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