Isn’t this AI world changing fast?

Special thanks to Melia Lewis, MEd, RDH for this guest post!

In January, I read about a Girls Who Code Event being held close to my home. I remember learning about Girls Who Code, their mission, and their support for girls and women from a Ted Talk years ago. During this talk, it highlights how important it is for girls to learn how to code to not only learn skills that you’ll keep for the rest of your life, they also learn about making mistakes, figuring out challenges, and working through problems. Of course, when I saw his event, I immediately signed up my 10 year old daughter. She went every week for four months for an hour and a half to learn some basic coding. She ended up making a game little game that highlighted a jumping muffin. Coding is tricky and does take a lot of practice, and she was proud of the game she developed. 

As this class was about to end, I saw another class at my local library called “AI and Coding for Kids.” This definitely piqued my interest to hear about AI and how we can use it, even as children. So I signed us both up. In that hour introductory class, they taught the basics of AI, and how we can use it to make codes for games. Ultimately, she made the exact same game that took her four months in about 30 minutes. Her final quote to me was “ Was all that time during the last months for nothing?”

More Time for Patients, Less Time on Tasks

We know with this ever changing technology, it isn’t going to wait for us to jump on board. It’s here, and supporting dental teams in many different ways- from front desk help, to saving time in the op, to helping highlight disease on radiographs. Really,  we can use it as a support for dentistry and dental hygiene every single hour. Just like my daughter’s experience, we can use AI to save time on little tasks so we can spend more time educating and helping our patients.

From Learning Curve to Time Saver: The Power of Voice Charting

Software like Alta AI can be key for time savings for dental hygienists. With hands free periodontal charting, we can now speak into a mic to record all of the patients periodontal measurements, from pocket depth to bleeding to recession. And with the AI technology, the software can understand each individual clinicians better and more accurately, even with different voices, cadences, and volumes. 

Now, I will say that there is a bit of a learning curve with using Voice Charting. Just like any technology, there is a little bit of time to get the flow into your hour appointment. But, with time, you’ll find it will help save you precious minutes in the long run. And really, every day I could use a little more time.

Your Turn: How Are You Using AI in Your Practice?

Her 4 months learning to code was definitely not for nothing, but a great learning experience for both of us seeing the change in technology so quickly. This highlighted how important we as professionals and clinicians need to be staying keyed in with the latest information and technology changes since they are coming quicker than ever.

Have you adopted AI Technology into your practice? What has been your experience?

 

Melia Lewis MEd, RDH is a proud clinician dental hygienist and dental hygiene educator of 16 years. She loves educating through her company Hygiene Edge, an online education platform teaching the latest tips and tricks to support dental professionals. To learn more, check out www.hygieneedge.com or on YouTube www.youtube.com/hygieneedge.

 

Ready to join Melia Lewis and get Alta Voice in your practice? Schedule with us here.