Think Oral Health @ HLTH 2024, Las Vegas with Adam Schulhof and Mark Goldstein

[00:00:04] Welcome to Think Oral, where we connect the interconnected between oral and physical health. I'm your host, Dr. Jonathan Levine. And I'm your host, Maria Filipova. Let's get at it.

[00:00:23] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of the Think Oral Health podcast coming to you from the exhibit floor at Health, HLTH in Vegas.

[00:00:35] This is exciting for both me and Dr. Jonathan Levine, the co-host of the Think Oral Health podcast with me. Hello, Jonathan. This is a quite special episode for us, isn't it?

[00:00:46] It sure is, Maria, and it's great to be here.

[00:00:48] It's great to be here, joined by two special guests, not one, but we get two special guests today.

[00:00:53] And we are bringing to our listeners exclusive insights and updates from all the activity and happenings at health.

[00:01:00] Today, we're sitting down with the founder of Digital Health Hub Foundation, Mark Goldstein, and a special CEO who is disrupting care delivery and imaging, who is the recipient of the first-of-a-kind Dental Health Award.

[00:01:19] And I'm super happy to be joined by Dr. Adam Schulhof from Grin.

[00:01:23] So happy to be here. Thank you guys so much.

[00:01:25] Hello, Mark. Hello, Adam. And so let's get to it.

[00:01:28] Mark, could you tell us a little bit about the Digital Health Hub Foundation and what prompted you to start this organization?

[00:01:37] Digital Health Hub Foundation puts on the Oscars of health care.

[00:01:41] Wow.

[00:01:42] And we said to ourselves, why is there an Oscar show for movies and there's no Oscars for health care?

[00:01:48] It seemed like, you know, health care is 24% of our GMP. It seems pretty important.

[00:01:53] That's right.

[00:01:53] We wanted to create just the Kick-Ass Award Show for health care. So six years in, we do it at HLTH. We get 2,000 companies apply every year, have 1,000 judges.

[00:02:03] Our budget, we now almost have a million-dollar budget from sponsors and everything else. We give it all back to the companies.

[00:02:09] We're a nonprofit. And we go through this process over six months and we find kick-ass companies that are changing the world through new technology.

[00:02:17] And if it wasn't for new technologies, we'd be in a lot of trouble with health care.

[00:02:21] Absolutely. Just give us a sense of the order of magnitude. How many companies apply? How many categories?

[00:02:27] This is a pretty big undertaking that's run by a nonprofit purely based on sponsorships and volunteers.

[00:02:34] Yeah. Again, 2,000 companies, 1,000 judges. We have 13 categories. This year was our first dental health category.

[00:02:42] What took you so long, by the way, Mark? Other than you and I haven't known each other that long. So maybe that's what it was.

[00:02:48] No, but really the question is what prompted it? What has happened in your own life maybe or is the, you know, shining the light on the connection of the mouth and the body?

[00:02:56] What has happened there?

[00:02:56] I think this oral care thing that you guys in oral health, you know, is really resonating.

[00:03:00] My background is in digital health for the last 10 years. None of us were that much talking about dental.

[00:03:05] It just didn't really come up. We were all focusing on diagnostics and AI and, you know, things that basically, you know, these amazing apps like Noom and everything else that were changing the world.

[00:03:15] But we started listening to you guys and saying, well, oral care, there's a lot of stuff that happens starting in the mouth and your teeth.

[00:03:21] And it's like we basically have bought in and we thought it was time for a whole category.

[00:03:27] The HLTS show created this big center through CareQuest. We said, time to start.

[00:03:32] Yeah, that's great.

[00:03:33] Times are already changing, right, Maria?

[00:03:34] Times are changing.

[00:03:35] It's like you had that category yesterday and it was so exciting.

[00:03:38] And it wasn't like, well, what's dental doing here?

[00:03:41] It's finally getting to the point that there's some connectivity with medicine and dentistry and back and forth with it to reinforce each other for better patient outcomes.

[00:03:51] And definitely a more effective and efficient health care system that's kind of running away with itself.

[00:03:58] But let's turn to Adam for a second.

[00:03:59] Adam, you know, it's so interesting.

[00:04:01] The founders of these companies with the DMDs and the MDs and the DDS letters after their name.

[00:04:07] You're an amazing orthodontist.

[00:04:09] I know you from orthodontics.

[00:04:12] I know you also as an entrepreneur.

[00:04:14] Maybe tell us a little bit about how your orthodontic background and your own educational background led you up to figuring out a couple of things or two.

[00:04:23] Yeah, I appreciate that.

[00:04:25] Well, first of all, thank you guys so much for being here.

[00:04:27] And, you know, we were just talking about the recognition that finally oral care has here at HLTH.

[00:04:34] I think everybody needs to understand how key Maria was to bringing this all to be.

[00:04:40] You know, truly, last year was the first year that oral care had a small little pavilion, all thanks to Maria.

[00:04:47] Maria truly pushed the boundaries to make it happen.

[00:04:50] And this year, this pavilion is unbelievable.

[00:04:54] Tremendous.

[00:04:54] I mean, you walk into the hall and you see oral care, that sign hanging.

[00:04:58] So it's been a great team.

[00:04:59] And thank you for saying it.

[00:05:00] Kudos to Maria.

[00:05:01] I mean, she has done what we have all been trying to do for the very longest time.

[00:05:06] And thankfully, it is all coming to fruition.

[00:05:08] My own journey, you know, it's interesting you talk about all the letters, the DMDs, the MDs, etc.

[00:05:13] It's funny because sometimes you talk to investors and they're like, oh, we don't like these CEO doctors, you know.

[00:05:21] But the reality is in dentistry, we are all entrepreneurs.

[00:05:24] When you're opening up your first practice, if you don't know a thing or two about running a business, that is not going to bode well for you, right?

[00:05:32] Things are going to happen very quickly.

[00:05:33] My own journey in being, fortunately, an orthodontist in New York City was that as some of these direct-to-consumer companies were hitting the market,

[00:05:42] my practice was the recipient of so many of these patients that unfortunately were being maltreated.

[00:05:49] And instead of just kind of getting on my dental soapbox and yelling and screaming about, oh, you know, the ADA has to do something, the FDA has to do something.

[00:05:57] For me, it was more about, let me understand the mindset of the consumer, the patient.

[00:06:04] And I took all of those patients.

[00:06:06] I give them a nice discount on treatment.

[00:06:08] And I'm like, I need you to run a survey.

[00:06:10] I want you to do an interview for me.

[00:06:12] I want to understand what was that switch that flipped in your mind that you said, I could do this treatment from home without a doctor in the care room.

[00:06:20] And across the board, it was convenience.

[00:06:22] I mean, across healthcare, we understand about the consumerization of healthcare probably before we understood it in dentistry.

[00:06:29] And the reality is, is we have to look at ourselves as doctors and maybe we were missing the boat a little bit on what consumers' needs were.

[00:06:37] And my goal was to bridge that gap.

[00:06:40] Absolutely, doctor in the care loop, responsible oversight and care.

[00:06:44] But can we bring consumers more convenience, not by taking the doctor out of the care loop, but by layering in technology?

[00:06:52] Wow.

[00:06:53] Yeah.

[00:06:53] Wow.

[00:06:54] I mean, so many threats to pull on.

[00:06:56] Yeah.

[00:06:56] Unpack that a little bit.

[00:06:57] That's right.

[00:06:58] Let's go a little bit on the technology side.

[00:07:00] We all kind of know the few companies that were looking to get around the specialist.

[00:07:05] And I must tell you, I'm a specialist, also a prosthodontist.

[00:07:09] And of all the specialists, the smartest ones who went into orthodontics, they were the smartest in the class.

[00:07:17] And just the notion that you can do tooth movement without being a specialist with an educational background of normally another five, six years after dental school was truly wacky.

[00:07:30] So anyway, the economics proved out and the tide has turned.

[00:07:35] And you need the doctor in the room and diagnosing.

[00:07:40] But you're hitting on the technology.

[00:07:42] What have you discovered from a technological standpoint to create that efficiency and effectiveness for the consumer?

[00:07:49] Well, my goal was really looking at how do I connect the consumer and the doctor basically by the consumer having the doctor in his or her back pocket.

[00:07:57] And so I looked at the mobile device and the fact that, you know, we didn't want to be a hardware company where as you're going through the cycle of innovation, you're essentially at a point by the time you commercialize where you're obsolete.

[00:08:09] And so we've got mobile devices that consumers are upgrading year over year over year with unbelievable imaging technology within it.

[00:08:17] And I said, how can I put a team together to leverage that technology and maybe even hijack that technology for our own good?

[00:08:26] So that a consumer at any time, at any place can essentially take out their mobile device with our smart little connection and give a doctor a view inside their mouth.

[00:08:36] Right.

[00:08:37] And so that's where it all started.

[00:08:38] And as we were collecting all of these scans, as we had doctors and patients talking across the platform, we started seeing that these conversations were not just about tooth movement, not just about orthodontics, but so much of the conversation was on hygiene, on oral care.

[00:08:56] And it just started opening up in my mind all of these gaps that we have across oral care.

[00:09:01] And I turned to the team and said, guys, with this data, we can start training an LLM.

[00:09:07] We can start training a model that can start really immediately diagnosing these things so that we can educate and empower consumers to know when they needed to get into their doctor.

[00:09:19] Right butts in the right seat at the right time.

[00:09:21] I love it.

[00:09:22] It's pretty amazing.

[00:09:23] So you really closed a gap because, you know, with all due respect to my wonderful profession that I went into 35 years ago, not everybody loves going to the dentist.

[00:09:33] But we need to be on top of their health and they do need to have a rhythm of getting into the dentist.

[00:09:39] So there you are.

[00:09:41] You figured something out that was a huge pain point for people.

[00:09:44] What have you found?

[00:09:45] The entrepreneurial journey is so iterative.

[00:09:48] So through these learnings, where have you landed today from the value proposition of what you're doing and then cast out a little bit for us?

[00:09:56] Sure.

[00:09:56] And just to I don't want to lose something very powerful that both of you said.

[00:10:00] The assumption should not be that oral health happens only when you go to the dentist.

[00:10:06] Right.

[00:10:06] Right.

[00:10:07] And so we absolutely want people to have a dental home, to have a relationship with a dental care team as part of a broader care team.

[00:10:13] But that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be taking care of their oral health at school, at home, at work.

[00:10:20] And what Green has been able to do is to decentralize or decouple the ability to take care of your oral health from the need to be at the dentist.

[00:10:30] Right.

[00:10:31] And that's powerful.

[00:10:32] That brings dentistry and oral health outside of the limitations of a brick and mortar facility.

[00:10:38] But also not, look, not the first company that's tried this.

[00:10:41] Right.

[00:10:41] Jonathan and I both invested in another company that is not really around that's tried this, tried to bring, you know, AI and imagery and everything into the oral health room.

[00:10:51] It's hard.

[00:10:52] It's really hard to do this.

[00:10:53] You didn't have the processing power.

[00:10:55] But Adam has really tricked it out as figuring out what's the container, what's the message, and how is this making sense?

[00:11:00] That's exactly right.

[00:11:01] So back to your question, Adam, how did you figure it out?

[00:11:04] And what was that entrepreneurial journey like?

[00:11:07] And then, Mark, we're going to come back to you on that because you are an entrepreneur on your own right, an investor.

[00:11:12] And so we want to know about your entrepreneurial mindset that is reflected in what you're currently doing with the Digital Hub Health Foundation and your other ventures.

[00:11:21] Nice.

[00:11:21] But back to you.

[00:11:22] Yeah.

[00:11:23] Well, first of all, I couldn't have even said it better myself.

[00:11:26] But we started in the world of orthodontics.

[00:11:28] This was near and dear to my heart.

[00:11:30] This is really the trigger point of what we were trying to do.

[00:11:32] We very quickly realized there was an even bigger gap and therefore bigger opportunity here.

[00:11:38] And that's where we started heading into the world of oral care, you know, as a whole.

[00:11:42] The way you couched it was perfect.

[00:11:45] The reality is, is that, again, with all respect to our colleagues, this notion of six months, somebody pulled it out of their ass somewhere.

[00:11:54] I apologize for my language.

[00:11:55] I mean, you know, the reality is, is that there are patients that absolutely should be seen every three months.

[00:12:02] And there are patients that could be seen once a year if they were doing what they needed to be done at home.

[00:12:07] And so this ongoing care, this concept of, you know, we look at it within all of medicine, they call it wellness.

[00:12:14] And some people use it as a derogatory thing.

[00:12:17] It shouldn't be at all.

[00:12:18] Right.

[00:12:18] But this ongoing wellness, looking holistically at everything that you're doing on a daily basis and how that's going to impact the long term.

[00:12:26] This is where we can layer on so that patients, consumers at home have the knowledge of what's going on.

[00:12:33] How many of our patients say, oh, well, you know, I really haven't come to see you in a while because nothing hurt.

[00:12:39] Wow.

[00:12:40] So they're only coming to see you when something hurts.

[00:12:42] It's already gone too far.

[00:12:44] Now that visit is going to be painful.

[00:12:46] It's going to cost a lot more.

[00:12:47] And then nobody likes dentists because we give them pain and we cost a lot of money.

[00:12:52] Right.

[00:12:52] But if we can get them connected to a dental home virtually even in between those six month visits, if we can have them do regular check-ins with their hygienist or with the AI that's empowering them with the knowledge of what's happening in their mouth.

[00:13:06] This is where we're suddenly really, really changing the tide of how patients and consumers are even thinking about their own care and their doctors that they're connected to.

[00:13:16] Spot on.

[00:13:16] Spot on.

[00:13:16] That's really exciting.

[00:13:17] But if you take what you just said and we went out, let's go three, four, five years, the amount of data and machine learning that we're going to be able to have is going to either support the notion that everybody is different.

[00:13:31] Everybody has a different host response.

[00:13:33] Everybody has a different diet.

[00:13:34] Everybody has a different home care regimen.

[00:13:37] Everybody's different.

[00:13:38] And so some people, based on genetics and the environment they're creating, the epigenetics of that, will need oversight, to your point, a greater amount of time.

[00:13:49] But what you have done is you've really brought yourself, us clinicians, into the home to support them.

[00:13:58] Right.

[00:13:59] And then we can direct and they have their expert sitting on their shoulder when it comes to their oral health and other things.

[00:14:06] That lead to overall health, like an area in their mouth that is suspect.

[00:14:10] And we have to take a good look at it with any of our cancer detection type things, which is life threatening.

[00:14:17] A potential start of an abscess, which is life threatening.

[00:14:21] So you're really hitting on something.

[00:14:23] And as we all know, it's so iterative, this entrepreneurial journey.

[00:14:28] So let's cast out five years.

[00:14:31] What's it going to look like?

[00:14:32] I love it.

[00:14:34] So five years, and this is, you know, the dream.

[00:14:38] The dream is grin sits on the counter of every consumer at home.

[00:14:42] And every, for some, week, for some every month, for some every two months, patients, consumers are brushing their teeth and taking a scan.

[00:14:51] Now they also can follow month over month, week over week changes that are happening within their mouth, whether it's positive or negative.

[00:14:59] They can be immediately connected to us clinicians, immediately connected to specialists, all in the same platform that can help guide them through where they need to go.

[00:15:10] And the Grin Scope can then be available either through providers, through insurer payers, or even on the shelf in Walmart for moms that want to have the ability at any point in time to know exactly what's going on in their kids' mouths or in our own mouths.

[00:15:25] And that's really the dream here.

[00:15:26] You got to love this.

[00:15:27] Change the face of what we're doing.

[00:15:28] I love this.

[00:15:29] Our focus, this conversation has been on all the amazing milestones, the grit, the work, everything you've accomplished so far.

[00:15:38] But I don't want our listeners to think that your job is done.

[00:15:42] We're very early in the journey.

[00:15:44] There's so much more that we need to do as decision makers, as investors, as consumers of products.

[00:15:50] And so with that in mind, first of all, let's acknowledge how brief this conversation has been only as a glimpse into what these two leaders are doing.

[00:16:01] And so we should absolutely have a follow-up conversation with this, Jonathan.

[00:16:04] I would absolutely love this.

[00:16:05] And, you know, my head's spinning because, you know, we also have other foundations that are all about the health equity.

[00:16:11] And I can see this as so important because in between our missions, we really want to follow up on our people.

[00:16:18] So we have to talk.

[00:16:19] Got the work to come.

[00:16:20] Yeah.

[00:16:20] But we also have to give kudos to Mark.

[00:16:22] I do.

[00:16:23] Because that platform that he's creating allows us to shine a light on companies like Grin.

[00:16:28] Exactly.

[00:16:29] And so I know we're going to make you very uncomfortable acknowledging your amazing work.

[00:16:32] And we were witnessing truly the Oscars of health care last night.

[00:16:36] And it was a privilege to be part of this new category, dental health category, along with food as medicine and AI in health care and femtech.

[00:16:46] And this is really where the industry is going and where we, as our listeners and people behind the mic now, have a sense of responsibility to continue that dialogue and transformation.

[00:16:58] So, Mark, we give you the last question.

[00:17:01] What is your invitation to the leaders who are attending health, HLTH, who are investors, who are leaders of their own companies, large companies, small companies, and innovators?

[00:17:14] How can they support the platform, the movement you have started that is part of this transformative journey in health care?

[00:17:21] It's actually pretty simple.

[00:17:23] Great entrepreneurs are born.

[00:17:27] And they're naturals.

[00:17:29] And, you know, with Adam, he's a great entrepreneur.

[00:17:31] And that's why he won.

[00:17:32] He was one of the winners of this year's award.

[00:17:34] And he was also a recipient of a $50,000 check, which is only the fifth time we've given out cash awards across all of digital health to any company.

[00:17:44] And because he's taking a very hard problem and really looking and he's solving it innovatively and creatively.

[00:17:52] Wow.

[00:17:52] But answering your question, digital health.

[00:17:55] Why digital health?

[00:17:56] Well, you know, without digital health, we're all in trouble.

[00:17:58] I just keep going back to that.

[00:18:00] Our job as a foundation is to help great entrepreneurs scale and grow.

[00:18:05] And that is our magic two words, scale and grow.

[00:18:07] And by winning our awards, and that's what our companies do, they promote the fact they are best of class, best of breed companies in whatever their category is.

[00:18:17] And this is, you know, social blew up for all these companies today because they were able to basically promote their Oscar.

[00:18:23] We call it our digital healthy.

[00:18:25] And our digital healthy says you're the best.

[00:18:27] You're the damn best at what you do.

[00:18:29] So we're here to honoring you, Adam, and your great work.

[00:18:32] And the other 13 entrepreneurs that won the best in class categories.

[00:18:37] So, you know, my background was an entrepreneur.

[00:18:39] That's sort of, I started a dozen companies, sold them to Reuters and Sears and Yahoo and who else?

[00:18:45] Microsoft.

[00:18:46] And you found your way to health.

[00:18:48] Found my way to health.

[00:18:48] Why did I come to healthcare?

[00:18:49] To me, it was the most messed up and it was the most messed up and it was the biggest place to go.

[00:18:54] And that's how I wanted into my career.

[00:18:55] So my last eight, nine years have been investing in 150 different healthcare, digital health related companies.

[00:19:00] And now I'm basically infatuated with what you guys are doing in oral health and digital health.

[00:19:06] So I'm looking forward to coming back and talking more about all this.

[00:19:09] Very excited.

[00:19:10] We absolutely will have you back.

[00:19:12] And with that, I'll probably leave this with our listeners and invite them.

[00:19:16] Next time you're considering or looking for a product in oral health, look up the Digital Health Hub Awards.

[00:19:24] See if there's a company that has been recognized by them as best in class, either as a winning company or as one of the 10 finalists.

[00:19:32] Because these companies were handpicked after cycles and cycles of judging from a pretty stellar roster of judges to get to that place.

[00:19:42] So look out for those handpicked awardees from the Digital Health Hub Award Foundation.

[00:19:50] And congratulations again, Adam and Team Grin.

[00:19:53] Thank you guys very much.

[00:19:54] And thank you for all the work you're doing, Mark.

[00:19:57] Absolutely.

[00:19:58] Well said, Maria.

[00:19:59] All right.

[00:20:00] Thank you.

[00:20:00] See you next time.

[00:20:01] Talk soon.

[00:20:07] Thanks for listening to the Think Oral podcast.

[00:20:11] For the show notes and resources from today's podcast, visit us at www.outcomesrocket.health.com or start a conversation with us on social media.

[00:20:24] Until then, keep smiling and connecting care.