Anne: this is the dental entrepreneur, the future of dentistry podcast. And today I'm very excited to have my dear friend and special guest. And also. A new member of our editorial board, um, with us. I've known him for a long time. I've adopted him and I think he's adopted me.
And, uh, I know, and we've had so much fun together, but he's such a brilliant man and knows so much about technology. He is known in the industry as the tech, not the dental technology guy. Travis grew up in Silicon Valley. So technology has always been a huge part of his life. He's passionate about building custom dental software solutions that make an impact on dentist, dental teams, and patients.
Over the past two decades, Travis has invented many dental software programs like Dr. DDS Innovations, ClickOne Referral, VeryDent, Scout, Analytics, RecordLink. Love dentists and more. Check out his website.
Travis: I appreciate it, Anne. You know, I love you. I call you my dental mother. Um, it's, it's funny to have you read my bio that is off of the website, right?
Because we've known each other for so many years.
Anne: I know, but I love reading about you and you know, you were also the number one entrepreneur in dentistry. You've been called that. I mean, Travis, I'm so lucky to have you as our tech editor for dental entrepreneur. And, and I'm so lucky to have you in my life because you have your, you have your, the pulse on the tech industry and dentistry, and you've written this beautiful, um, article.
This was the first article that you wrote for dental entrepreneur. That is that we just started with every issue so that you're listening here. Every issue of dental entrepreneur is going to have an article from Travis because he knows the ins and outs of technology. What's good. And he's going to be able to guide you, uh, all of you that, that are just getting new dipping into dentistry, but also that you've been there for a long time and you don't have the time to study and investigate what's good and what's not good.
And, uh, so this article we want to talk about today, the most important Technological no technology decision you will make as a dentist. That's the title of this. So, you know, Travis, tell us a little bit about what made you want to write this article and, and what, what are your thoughts on technology right now?
Travis: Well, you know, I mean, and there'll be things that we talk about in the future about how to implement technology and some of the emerging technologies that we're seeing in the dental industry. But the reason why I really opened with the most important technology decision to make as a dentist. And I talk about, Selecting a product, really a product that's right for you and your dental practice that you're going to do on a daily basis, which is your practice management software, right?
And I think it's, um, you know, people know Dentrix has the most customers. They have a 60, 000 customers. Eagle soft is number two, open dental is number three. And then we're seeing a lot of cloud based products coming up. Um, and you know, there's, there's a lot, you know, it's hard to summarize this all in an article because I know most of these companies.
In and out, right? I mean, I, I have been the integration partner for Dentrix and Eaglesoft for the last 10, 15 years. I was in Henry Shine's office last week. All these companies have, you know, brought me in as an advisor for them as far as like, you know, roadmaps and whatnot, um, and, and connecting them with the right people.
So as a dentist, you know, and we see this all the time, right? You get sold a product, you're excited about it. Come Monday, you come back to the practice, you try and implement it, it fails. So that's a. The thing about implementing this is that this is the daily, this is the product you use on a daily basis.
So it is the most important thing. I mean, it, my, my mom and dad told me growing up, Travis, the most important decision you make is the woman you marry. And, and so this is a little bit of a play off of that saying the most important decision or the most important marriage you have from a technology perspective is your practice manager system.
And so that's, that's really There's a big movement towards cloud based products, which is basically meaning that they're hosted, um, with the, with the fact that the internet connections are so fast, those are becoming more popular effect. I'll be in the office of one of the larger ones next week, um, advising them on kind of what they're doing, but for the most part, still, the majority of these are on premise.
They're literally sitting on a server in the back of an office. Um, serviced by an I. T. team and there's, there's pluses and minuses of that people, you know, when it comes to HIPAA compliance, they like to feel and be able to have, have their server and their data close to them. Um, but the, the cloud based stuff is definitely picking up.
So when we look at like the top on premise system, it's Dentrix, EagleSoft, OpenDental, as far as like the largest cloud based systems that are out there. Um, Curve is the biggest, they've been around the longest. Dentrix Ascend is coming up, um, and that's the Henry Schein product, Fuses by Patterson, and Planet DBS, Tab32, Aspro, Onyx.
Um, there's some really neat ones that are coming up that are, if I'm starting out as a dentist, I'm going to look at all of them. And, um, and I'm going to also involve the team with the process. And, and I think that's probably one of the most important Important decisions right now. Um, cause when we talked to dentists and we talked to about 200, 300 a year, we ask them what their biggest pain points are right now, it's keeping that team happy, right.
And maintaining that team. So make sure that you're involving them in the technology decisions.
Anne: Yeah. Because you know why that's so important is that you have to make it fairly easy for the team. So the integration and all of those things, you know, I, I just coming from an office that it's, it's on a server.
The it guys there. Like three or four times a week, and it just seems like there's got to be a better way. So I get the, I guess the technology as it grows, uh, you know, it's faster than faster than speed, um, or than light, I guess you would say is, is there's going to be some other options, better options, I guess.
And, and everybody's got to kind of, you know, uh, continue to, to, uh, use their technology and their research to develop them.
Travis: Yeah. I mean, here's what it's just like any, any, any partner, right. And then technology can be a partner, but technology could be one of your greatest assets, one of your greatest part business partners, or one of your greatest enemies, right?
It's, um, there is no perfect partner. There is no perfect, um, person. There is no perfect system. And so understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each of those systems and evaluating them. So, you know, I come from Silicon Valley. I worked at Oracle. I worked at IBM. I did the corporate route. We have very structured processes that we use to select technology when you work at a, at a big company.
But for some reason in this industry, they completely throw that out the door. There is no process that does make decisions on their emotions, um, on maybe your referrals and word of mouth things they do not necessarily evaluate systems that I don't mean to say they in a negative way, it's just, that's the category it's, it's tied to their personality types.
Which is again, another podcast for another time. Um, but it's, it's, um, you know, literally putting a spreadsheet together, call it an RFP, request for proposal, request for information, talking to your team, saying what are the 20 most important things that you want to have in a system, putting that out to the 10 vendors that are out there, Doing a structured evaluation.
I mean, and this is one of the things that I help my dental friends with is like, here's how you select a system, you know, sit down with your team, talk to them, ask them what they like, ask them what they used in the past, what they liked and didn't like about those systems, because most team members have used multiple systems.
And they're like, I like this from that. I like that from that. And you know, the fact that Dentrix has so many users always puts them in favor because what happens is you get used to using a certain system and you don't want to change. Yeah. Sometimes you have to have the conviction, right? So this is another thing as a dental practice.
You once you decide once you make that, you know, good communication, good coordination and then conviction that you know this this system is the right system team. Look at what we did to get to this point. Right. And this is why a lot of times I'll say bring in a consultant to, you know, because, uh, you know, because it's confusing.
Decision of your career. Probably need some advice and some help, not just from your other dental friends.
Anne: Yeah, not from uncle Charlie, right? That's what I always say. You know, that's so interesting also because you know, when you think about it, wouldn't it be great. I mean, looking back, I'm sure there's a lot of dentists listening to this right now.
Wouldn't they just love to just start fresh. Because what happens is they get this certain system and then it's like one bandaid on top of another. Right. And so to be able to start fresh, would you recommend that? I mean, I guess you can't really just do that. Do you ever go in and say, you just need to scrap what you're doing and let's start over again.
Travis: Yeah. Uh, you know what? It's, it's, It's, it's, it's ironic because we've done that and then sometimes they even go back to the original system. It's like somebody getting a divorce and then going back to your ex wife, you know, it's like you left him for a reason, you know, I mean, granted, you may figure out that the grass is not greener, but it's a devil that
Anne: you know, right.
It's a
Travis: devil that you know, like at least, you know, there's not that I'm speaking from experience.
Anne: No, no, no.
Travis: No. No.
Anne: And you know, that's, that's another thing about being married. So you, it's the best decision, the most important decision you make, but you have to accept what you have, right? And you have to love them for exactly who they are and just keep pouring into them.
So it does really align as well itself. And I love that, uh, the little play that you made with your, with your article, it made it fun to read.
Travis: Well, you know, and, and again, you know, again, understanding nothing's perfect, but the, the, the, um, you know, where do you start, right? You can Google practice management systems.
You'll see there's hundreds of them that come up. You can go back to the articles. There's, there's some great resources, um, different websites that dentists follow, um, for selecting and evaluating system. A lot of them are unfortunately somewhat biased, you know, because either it's old information or it's.
Um, they're paid off to have that hosted on their website. That's you gotta be careful of people's bias towards certain directions.
Anne: But it's helpful to have somebody, you know, that knows what they're talking about and can understand the, the ins and outs of it, how it's, how it works, the good and the bad.
They're the, you're, you know, like for instance, you're the expert. That's why you're on this podcast. And that's why you're our editor. And the, the, the, the dental tech guy, um, because they don't go to school for that and they, there's just so much to learn before you make these big, uh, financial decisions.
Travis: Yeah. And so, I mean, let's, we'll wrap it up with that, right? Cause I think we have other things we want to talk about on some other podcasts. We'll talk about future articles. There's a lot of interesting things coming up in the dental industry around artificial intelligence. We're going to be talking about that on some follow up podcasts.
We're going to talk about how to implement systems. We're going to talk about. Marketing platforms that are out there. There's a lot of really important, really interesting things out there, but I think just to kind of summarize it and wrap it up. I mean, there's some factors to consider when you're looking at practice management systems, you know, making that important decision of your life partner as a dental practice management system, um, understanding that there is nothing that there is no perfect answer.
Nobody's perfect, right? Everybody's getting better. And a big part of that is, Are they open to feedback? Do they have user groups? Do they, um, do they have the ability, you know, do they have good customer support? Right. Um, cost is always a factor, right? And then think about whether you have a good it team to be able to support the server on premise, or would you rather just have somebody else manage that?
And, um, I think, you know, does it integrate? So one thing that we didn't talk about too much, which is near and dear to my heart. Is I call it the dental integration revolution, which will be another podcast coming up here as well too, because I'm one of the, you may not have, and, and, you know, Dentrix is improving upon this Eagle soft is improving upon this open dental is going a little different direction.
And some of these. Cloud based systems, some of the cloud based systems like curve and tab 32 and these other and care stack in particular care stack tab 32. They don't let it many people, if any, integrate to their system. So you're literally stuck with whatever they have functionality wise. So make sure whatever system you use and you implement, in my opinion, is open to integration, because what you can do is you can have your core system, your core practice management system that may have a missing link, a missing piece, like let's say a marketing capability that you want.
And if you have another product that does that well, if it's not integrated, it's only 50 percent is good. So integration becomes extremely important and the openness of your practice management provider to integrate with other systems because you can literally have a best in breed, best in class part type of system that ties into a Practice management system.
That's just decent for doing what that does. So integration becomes really important. And that's kind of the last thought that I have on that, but make sure you're shopping around, make sure that you, um, you know, there's a platform that's going to fit your needs today and for the future. Cause you don't want to have to change systems because the migration process can be difficult and time consuming and you don't get all those things over.
So again, getting back to that integration, make sure they're open to, uh, being easy to integrate with. And I'm seeing, you know, some of these systems really improve upon that. Um, also with the 21st century cures coming out, coming out. So appreciate your time, Anne. Thank you so much for having me and look forward to our future conversations.
Anne: Thank you, Travis. Me too. I'm looking forward to the next time we get together. How can they find you, Travis? Tell me.
Travis: Uh, so, I mean, the easiest is Dr. DDS. Drdvs. com or Travis rogers. com with a D. Um, and, uh, you know, always say hi at the conferences. I'm I've been in on 15 plane rides in the last month. I'll be at the Western regional again tomorrow.
And you know, what I do is just see and learn about new technology. So if somebody is looking at something, they can reach out to me and I'll give them advice and I am non biased because I'm not paid off by any of these companies to give that advice. So
Anne: I love it. Well, you're our guy. You're our dental tech guy, our dental editor, our dental tech editor.
And we appreciate you so much. We appreciate you this time today. So everybody have a great Friday. It's Friday here in Charlotte, North Carolina. Have a great Friday and, uh, and keep doing you. Bye everybody.
