Transforming Dentistry: School of Dentistry Enhances Patient Care with New Digital Tools

The University of Minnesota School of Dentistry (SoD) is advancing its digital capabilities this summer to improve education and patient care. SoD has enabled Primescan for accurate 3D digital impressions and Doximity for HIPAA-compliant communication. Additionally, it is preparing for the August 2026 launch of Pearl AI, a platform providing real-time radiographic interpretation and diagnostic precision for clinicians.

Coming Soon! Pearl AI

Pearl AI is a dental AI platform that serves as a chair-side "second opinion" and provider calibration tool. It is designed to assist student, faculty, and staff clinicians with radiographic interpretation. The School of Dentistry (SoD) is targeting an August 2026 launch.

Key Capabilities

• Automated Diagnostic Precision: It serves as a real-time, chairside "second opinion" by automatically detecting and highlighting pathologies (such tooth decay and cavities) and existing restorations with high accuracy in under 30 seconds.
• Enhanced Patient Visualization: The platform transforms grayscale X-rays into clear, color-coded visual overlays, improving patients' ability to understand their diagnoses and actively participate in their treatment plans.
• Provider Calibration and Training Support: It establishes a standardized, data-driven baseline to align radiographic interpretation across student and faculty clinicians, while automatically flagging technical image-quality errors like positioning mistakes.
• Optional Clinical Filter: The resulting AI insights are pushed back to MiPACS, where they become available to providers as an optional "second-opinion" layer during live clinical reviews.

Primescan

Primescan is an intraoral scanner designed to capture fast and accurate 3D digital impressions of a patient's teeth and oral cavity. 

Key Capabilities

• From Preclinical to Clinic: Following its successful introduction into the preclinical environment, where students first learn the fundamentals of digital dentistry, the technology has been scaled up for use in Predoc (predoctoral) clinics and connected to the Digital Dentistry Exchange, which enables secure communication with internal and external dental laboratories. 
• Dual Impact: By bringing intraoral scanners into patient-facing clinics, the initiative simultaneously enhances dental education for student clinicians while elevating patient care through faster, more comfortable, and diagnostics.

Doximity

Doximity Dialer is a secure, HIPAA-compliant telehealth tool designed to streamline virtual care by bridging the gap between healthcare professionals and their patients by enabling HIPAA compliant voice, text, and video communication. 

Key Capabilities

• Protects Provider Privacy: It allows clinicians to text or make voice or video calls directly from their personal devices while displaying their clinic phone number on the patient’s caller ID. This keeps personal contact information entirely private.
• Connects Patients and Providers Easily: The tool enables seamless communication without forcing patients to navigate complex setups; they can join a telehealth session with a single click, requiring no app downloads or account logins.
• Language Line Compatibility: The platform works well with Language Line, allowing clinicians to quickly add a qualified medical interpreter directly into the live call. This ensures that Dentistry providers can easily overcome communication barriers, allowing them to discuss treatment plans, diagnoses, and care instructions with patients in their preferred language.