Calgary-based healthtech startup OraQ AI has closed $2.6 million CAD in seed funding from dentists and others to commercialize its clinical decision support platform for dental practices.
Led by dentists-turned-tech entrepreneurs, OraQ has developed software that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze dental and medical records and help other dentists assess patient risk, with the goal of helping them boost their businesses while also improving patient health and experience.
After securing Health Canada and United States Food and Drug Administration approval in 2023, OraQ launched its product and entered the market earlier this year. With its latest financing, the startup has set its sights on growing with mom-and-pop dental offices across North America.
“Too many patients leave today either confused or not trusting their dentist because they think the dentist is selling them on something they don’t need.”
Dr. Amreesh Khanna,
OraQ
The seed round, which was raised via simple agreement for future equity and closed in July, was led by Alberta-based angel physician group AngelMD. It also saw participation from the Centre for Aging + Brain Health Innovation, Startup TNT, and undisclosed dentists, physicians, family offices, and angel investors.
Dr. Amreesh Khanna, the co-founder and CEO of OraQ, bought his first dental practice in 2012 with his wife and brother, who are also both dentists. A year later, they lost it to the 100-year flood that hit Calgary in 2013. Khanna described the event as “a pivotal moment” for him.
“It really shifted me from being a dentist who owned a business to really becoming an entrepreneur and business owner who practiced dentistry,” Khanna told BetaKit in an exclusive interview.
After having learned little about business during dental school, Khanna said that losing his practice in 2013 forced him to look at the business of dentistry differently as they rebuilt. Over the coming years, Khanna said he noticed the discrepancies in how different dentists treated different patients and how they led to missed care and business opportunities.
He began to wonder if there was a way to help ensure that clinicians evaluated patients consistently regardless of their professional training, expertise, and years of experience. He became interested in AI and machine learning (ML) as a means of doing this in a scalable fashion.
This led Khanna to return to his alma mater, the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, to publish research on applying ML to clinical data in the dental space and work with the Edmonton-based Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii) to conduct tech and market validation.
After those efforts proved fruitful, Khanna incorporated OraQ in 2021 and teamed up with fellow dentist Dr. Mike Parchewsky, co-founder and chief clinical officer, and tech leader Wayne Madhlangobe, co-founder and CTO, to build the startup.
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OraQ’s seed round brings the company’s total dilutive funding to $3.9 million, a figure that also includes $1.3 million in previously unannounced equity pre-seed funding from 2021 that was provided by Greyhill and undisclosed dentists, physicians, and other angels. Separately, OraQ has also secured $1.3 million to date in non-dilutive financing from Alberta Innovates, the National Research Council of Canada’s Industrial Research Assistance Program, and Mitacs.
“Too many patients leave today either confused or not trusting their dentist because they think the dentist is selling them on something they don’t need,” Khanna said. He noted that many patients also depart without booking their next appointment.
OraQ hopes to change that with its software, which is designed to help dentists make better decisions and empower patients to understand the rationale behind dentists’ recommendations.
Fellow dentist Dr. John Tran, an angel investor in OraQ via Startup TNT’s investment summit, told BetaKit the company is “tackling a definite pain point in the dental industry.”
“How many times do patients go to different dentists and get wildly differing opinions and treatment plans?” Tran said. “OraQ is to be an industry science-based updated system that helps dentists with diagnosis, treatment planning, progress monitoring, and patient communication… all as an OBJECTIVE, scientifically-based system.”
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According to Khanna, OraQ’s software aims to leverage “the mind and the wisdom of 1,000 dentists” in every patient interaction. As a clinical support system rather than a diagnostic tool, Khanna emphasized that OraQ is designed to help clinicians assess patient risk. “We’re not saying, ‘You have this and you need this done,’” he said.
In terms of data, Khanna said that OraQ analyzes patient medical and dental health histories, dental examination data collected and reported into OraQ as clinicians perform exams, and historical tooth charting and periodontal or gum pocket depth records.
The startup’s AI-powered platform indicates that a patient is at low, medium, or high risk in a given category based on data analysis, evidence and research-backed protocols. OraQ focuses on seven core areas: medical risk, sleep disorders, bite and jaw issues, cracks and teeth, cavity profile, gum health profile, and esthetics.
“We’re not saying, ‘You have this and you need this done.’”
Dr. Amreesh Khanna,
OraQ
“It’s up to the clinician to make the final judgment on the diagnosis and the treatment plan,” Khanna said.
“That risk-based approach, we found, has been very well-received because it still empowers the clinician to use their expertise and their judgment for the final decision,” he added.
OraQ has a team of medical doctors, dentists, and other specialists that has helped build, vet, and refine its tech. “Everything has to be grounded in research and evidence-backed protocols, first and foremost, and then our AI is constantly being tested by our clinical team to make sure that it’s giving the right outputs,” Khanna claimed.
“What resonates with us in particular is that the OraQ approach is to see the entire dental value chain, end-to-end, delivering at multiple points in a variety of ways,” AngelMD general partner Dr. Shamir Patel told BetaKit. “They focus systematically on all processes in an effort to build a platform, not a tool.”
Patel said AngelMD believes that OraQ could deliver “optimized and standardized evidence-based patient care, improved practice management and increased revenue generation.”
Feature image courtesy OraQ AI.