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Dental Tribune Asia Pacific Edition | 12/2017 SCIENCE & PRACTICE 09 “Advanced knowledge and a supporting community via the Internet” An interview with Dr Mikko Nyman, developer of new dental consultation portal QAdental QAdental is open to all dental professionals globally and membership is free. – Dr Mikko Nyman at the 2017 Finnish Dental Congress and Exhibition in Helsinki. and learning experiences are shared with several practitioners at the same time, so QAdental serves as a kind of reverse innova- tion when it comes to Western countries. Compared with other By Benito Gründer, DTI In wovember, QAdental won the Innovation Award at the Finnish Dental Congress and Exhibition in Helsinki. Developed by Dr Mikko wyman and Teddy Grenman, Chief Dentist and Chief Engineer at wUOVO wORDIC Healthcare Services, re- spectively, the platform offers dental professionals the opportu- nity to e-consult with dental spe- cialists, serves as a database for learning material and patient cases, and enables forum discussions. Dental Tribune spoke with wyman about this pioneering solution and the expertise it brings to remote areas and developing countries. Congratulations on winning the award. How did this come about? This has been quite a year. We piloted QAdental in Namibia this spring. It wasn’t easy to obtain per- mission from the local ministry of health and it wasn’t easy to get peo- ple excited about something to- tally new. We visited the country twice. However, we managed to conduct the pilot successfully. Did you have a team to support you in the development process? QAdental was developed by a team. Teddy Grenman and I were the main architects, but without the rest of the team—CEO Jani Korpela, Chief Medical Officer Jarkko Saramäki and Project Co- ordinator Teemu Tanninen—we wouldn’t have been able to con- duct the pilot successfully in Na- mibia. Steve Jobs’s famous quote applies to QAdental also: “Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.” Did you expect to win the award? We knew that big Finnish play- ers such as Planmeca and Ham- masväline would take part in the contest with their new great, inno- vative products, but we were quite sure that there were not many ser- vice providers who would be tak- ing part, so we made the decision to participate in the contest. Cer- tainly, we didn’t expect to win. We didn’t even have any marketing material ready. We built QAdental based on the [Eric Ries’s] lean start-up principles. Validated learning was and will be the base for our development process. How do the features of QAdental help practitioners in particular? In Finland and many other countries, specialist services are not available in remote areas. This means dental professionals lo- cated there are obliged to work be- yond their scope. QAdental brings to them advanced knowledge and a supporting community via the Internet. This way, clinicians can perform more challenging proce- dures more safely and discuss pa- tient cases with their peers. The growing international database of questions and answers and learn- ing material is available for all members. With the help of the advanced search function—or maybe artificial intelligence in the near future—clinicians may find answers to their questions from previous questions and an- swers. What sets QAdental apart from other dental community platforms? This kind of consultation or support service might be very significant in enhancing patient safety and healthcare quality. Our plan was to export Finnish or Western expertise to developing countries. One challenge was that these countries cannot af- ford to pay for Western dental specialist consultation. That’s why we wanted to develop a way to share the knowledge. The solu- tion was quite obvious: we had to create a place where all consulta- tions, answers and learning ma- terial are available for all mem- bers so that the learning experi- ence wouldn’t be limited to one person. During the pilot project, we learnt that there’s a need for spe- cialist e-consultations also in Fin- land, especially in remote areas. In Finland, there’s no tele-consult- ing platform where information dental forums, QAdental focuses solely on consultation and learn- ing material. There’s always a den- tist on duty taking care of mainte- nance, and to make sure that the appropriate QAdental professional answers to the corresponding consultations. The officer on duty is also the quality controller when it comes to official answers. Will your product be globally avail- able? QAdental is open to all dental professionals globally and mem- bership is free. Dentists can regis- ter at www.qadental.com. Thank you very much for the inter- view. AD Interdental brush CPS prime Martina Hingis curaprox.com © Messukeskus Helsinki