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| cone beam supplement m o c . k c o t s r e t t u h S / s n o r y H b o R © “Advanced knowledge and a sup- porting community via the Internet” by DTI In November 2017, QAdental, a new dental consulta- tion portal, won the Innovation Award at the Finnish Den- tal Congress and Exhibition in Helsinki. Developed by Dr Mikko Nyman and Teddy Grenman, Chief Dentist and Chief Engineer at NUOVO NORDIC Healthcare Services, respectively, the platform offers dental professionals the opportunity to e-consult with dental specialists, serves as a database for learning material and patient cases, and enables forum discussions. Dental Tribune Interna- tional spoke with Nyman about this pioneering solution and the expertise it brings to remote areas and develop- ing countries. Congratulations on winning the award. How did this come about? This has been quite a year. We piloted QAdental in Na- mibia this spring. It wasn’t easy to obtain permission from the local ministry of health and it wasn’t easy to get peo- ple excited about something totally new. We visited the country twice. However, we managed to conduct the pi- lot successfully. In summary, this win feels very good and motivates us all to continue developing QAdental. Did you have a team to support you in the develop- ment 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 Coordinator Teemu Tanninen—we wouldn’t have been able to conduct the pilot success- fully in Namibia. 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.” With the success of the platform, will something change for you personally? My focus will be completely on QAdental and I’ll pass over most of my other duties in the company [NUOVO NORDIC Healthcare Services] to my colleagues. This ap- plies to Teddy also. 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 pro- fessionals located there are obliged to work beyond their scope. QAdental brings to them advanced knowledge and a supporting community via the Internet. This way, clinicians can perform more challenging procedures more safely and discuss patient cases with their peers. The growing international database of questions and answers and learning 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 answers. What sets QAdental apart from other dental commu- nity 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 exper- tise to developing countries. One challenge was that these countries cannot afford to pay for Western dental special- ist consultation. That’s why we wanted to develop a way to share the knowledge. The solution was quite obvious: we had to create a place where all consultations, answers and learning material are available for all members so that the learning experience wouldn’t be limited to one person. During the pilot project, we learnt that there’s a need for specialist e-consultations also in Finland, especially in remote areas. In Finland, there’s no tele-consulting platform where information and learning experiences are shared with several practitioners at the same time, so QAdental serves as a kind of reverse innovation when it comes to Western countries. Compared with other den- tal forums, QAdental focuses solely on consultation and learning material. There’s always a dentist on duty taking care of maintenance, and to make sure that the appro- priate QAdental professional answers to the correspond- ing consultations. The officer on duty is also the quality controller when it comes to official answers. Will your product be globally available or only for the Finnish market? QAdental is open to all dental professionals globally and membership is free. Dentists can register at www. qadental.com. Thank you very much for the interview. 38 CAD/CAM 1 2018