Dental Tribune Nordic Edition No.4, 2016

06 Dental Tribune Nordic Edition | 4/2016 BUSINESS “Dentists can have much better conversations with patients” An Interview with Cope it CEO Esben Toftdahl Nielsen, Denmark By Kristin Hübner, DTI Aiming to help patients suffering fromdentalanxiety,Danishstart-up Cope it introduced a digital anxiety treatment tool in June 2014. The solution consists of clinic software and an accompanying mobile app. Practices using the system ask their patients to answer a dental anxiety scale test on a tablet device prior to the visit. Through the test, they determine what situations trigger the patient’s anxiety most. The information collected is then used by the dentist to evaluate the pa- tient’s current level of dental fear. This, according to the developers, enables clinicians to respond more effectively to the special needs of these patients. In the last two years, much has happened, Cope it CEO Esben Toftdahl Nielsen told Dental Tribune 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 com- pany redirected its focus from giving practitioners insights into patients with dental anxiety to- wards a broader approach of using data intelligence for generally improving patients’ dental expe- riences too. Dental Tribune: The Cope it clinic software is aimed at helping pa- tients with dental anxiety. What has the feedback from patients and practitioners been? Esben Toftdahl Nielsen: It has been well received by both den- tists 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 anx- ious have felt that their dentist better understands them because of the advanced mental profile of the patient obtained via the soft- ware. This results in better care for patients, as well as increased treat- ment 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 collab- oration 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. Den- tists 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 com- munity 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 den- tal anxiety, that is they desired a more comprehensive dental as- sessment of the patient, thereby making the solution even more useful. This is now a core part of PI Dental as well. The patient pro- file 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 communica- tion today. We focus mainly on our blog, www.copeit.com/blog-uk, which provides the latest insights into our work. Thank you very much for the inter- view. “The patient profile covers two dimensions: needs and desires, and treatment barriers.” The PI Dental mental X-ray screen—the key patient profile screen. Feelings and thoughts are assessed in order to gain in-depth insight into the patient. Cope it CEO Esben Toftdahl Nielsen

Dental Tribune Nordic Edition No.4, 2016

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