Much of the focus being shed on orthodontics in the dentistry sector, other businesses, such as Adra, are integrating artificial intelligence into a dentist's day-to-day workflow, particularly in the area of cavity detection, in what is expected to be a $435.08 billion worldwide dental services industry this year.

The Singapore-based firm was created in 2021, and one of its co-founders Hamed Fesharaki, has been a dentist for over a decade and has two clinics in Singapore. He claims that dentists learn to read X-rays in dental school, but that mastering the skill can take several years.

It's quite often observed that dentists typically only have a few minutes to read them as they rush from one patient to the next, which is also the case for most doctors in any healthcare domain.

As a result, according to co-founder Yasaman Nemat, dentists misdiagnose cavities up to 40 percent of the time. Her expertise is in imaging, where she built an artificial intelligence computer for detecting difficult-to-see tumours, which Fesharaki believed might be used in dental medicine as well.

The talk in town is that Adra’s software is claimed to detect cavities and other dental problems 25 percent faster and more accurately on dental X-rays, allowing clinics to spend that time better serving patients and increasing income.

Dentists can now be able to determine how to address the condition based on how quickly the problem is identified and the extent of it. For one, a filling, a fluoride treatment, or waiting.

The company is winding up its time at Y Combinator's summer cohort alongside third co-founder Shifeng Chen, and has raised $250,000 so far. Fesharaki intends to do more formalized seed fundraising and wants to bring on more engineers to tackle user experience and add more features.

As it works toward FDA approval, the company has a few clinics that are participating in pilots and hopes to attract more. The clearance is expected to take six to nine months, and Adra will be ready to launch in late 2022 or early 2023, according to Fesharaki.

“We are coming from the perspective of an experienced dentist to help illustrate the issues by converting X-rays into visuals so that we can better understand what to look for. Meaning, the dentist has the last say, but we can help them compare and provide ideas based on our experience”, assures Fesharaki.

Despite the fact that dentists and physicians have different scopes of practice, their education and training are very similar. As a result, dental practitioners are a vital resource in the COVID-19 pandemic response, thanks to their expertise of basic human science and sterile surgical practices. Overall, many dentists have responded to the challenge in the fight against COVID-19, which is laudable. In Singapore, for instance, the National Dental Centre Singapore (NDCS) used dental clinicians and volunteers from research labs to screen for suspected cases, provide consultations, and undertake swabbing procedures.