DentalPRO: the digital revolution in profitable business

Interview with Alexander Shimansky, Head of DION SOFT. 



 

Can you please tell us what DentalPRO is? 

We develop, maintain and enhance DentalPRO to provide clinics with an advanced software product to manage their business from the inside out.

 

How and to whom did the idea for the start-up come, and why this particular one - dentistry?

Initially, the project was conceived not as a product for the market, but for a specific clinic. It was already well-equipped and advanced in its capabilities, so this was not a case where it would be enough to simply set up organisational processes and profits would increase dramatically. Here was a more difficult task: to increase the income of the clinic, which was already working at a good level.

When all the organisational issues were solved and the staff was fully staffed (and in dentistry you can not endlessly increase profits by increasing the flow of patients - there are physical limitations: the number of chairs and the time of work of doctors), it became clear that linear growth is impossible. Yes, there are clinics in the country that try to work around the clock, but usually it is the only doctor on duty, and he lives right in the clinic.

Dental clinics have strict limitations on space and appointment times, which means that if you want to increase the average bill, profitability and patient satisfaction, you have to look for new approaches to efficiency.

And so we started with an electronic registry - for internal needs. At first we wanted to take a ready-made product from the market, but I noticed that all the existing solutions at the time were not about efficiency. In essence, it was just an electronic appointment book: you could make an appointment with a patient, accept payment at the cash desk, look at some reports, and that was it. But such systems had no real impact on the work of the clinic.

 

Why so? 

Because dentistry was not just profitable, but a super-profitable industry - almost the most profitable among small businesses. On average, an ordinary entrepreneur could count on a profitability level of 5-7%. In the case of our industry, these figures reached an astronomical 40%. 

The secret of the phenomenon is actually simple. If we do not take into account large clinics, such as the one that I managed, the average market patients paid cash. Dentists did not want to show this cash. As a result, the clinic worked with turnover, as a normal market stall. And in fact, the profitability was simply prohibitive.

I came to the clinic, which was already doing well, but the task was to rise above the average level. The principal feature was that most dental clinics in our country are often opened by dentists themselves, and they also receive patients in them. Since doctors, as a rule, are far from economics, they do not always understand the difference between their earnings as a doctor and their income as a business owner.

More often than not, these dentists are the best specialists in their own clinic, the most in demand, with a fortnightly schedule. While earning a high income as an attending dentist, the owner does not always realise where his salary ends and where the profit of his clinic begins. In such conditions, if the income of the owner of a small clinic with three or five chairs allowed him not only to buy bread and butter and caviar (both red and black), but also to have holidays in the Maldives or Seychelles, the questions of efficiency were put on the back burner. Everything was fine as it was. But in the business clinic, where people from outside dentistry invested, there were initially different requirements. It was obvious to them that they would not make a profit as attending physicians, so the bar was higher.

 

It turns out that one of the key tools for the clinic's success was automation?

Plus, ambition and the desire to realise a truly successful project played a role. As a result, our clinic became the best in the Volga region three years in a row according to the Startsmile industry rating by the Kommersant newspaper. At the same time, it was not even located in a city with a million inhabitants, but it was still ahead of Kazan and Samara. This was a strong driver and confirmed that we were moving in the right direction.

When I studied the existing products on the market, my first thought was to take an off-the-shelf solution, modify it a little to suit my needs and cover all my needs.

However, it soon became clear that all such systems worked on the same principle: they fixed the current status quo and provided only basic functions - appointment and payment at the cash desk. And even payment could be unrelated to the programme, which allowed to accept money ‘in cash’ without issuing cheques. This was a common practice in those days.

But my task was different: to work ‘in the white’ and to do it as efficiently as possible. When I realised that it would not be possible to adapt a ready-made product to our requirements, I had to create my own system from scratch. First, the electronic registration desk appeared, then doctors joined the process - they needed tools to keep medical records and other documentation.

So, step by step, by 2019 we had a working product that could be launched in the clinic in pilot mode. And by the end of 2020, we had accumulated enough successful cases, including co-operation with our first investors. It was they who subsequently entered the company's capital.

 

For example?

We are talking about Dion, the largest medical holding company in Tatarstan, which covers about 40% of private dentistry in the region. It has 16 large clinics in the medium and premium segment, known for their high level of equipment. Our programme was first tested in their premium clinics, and the result was successful.

At that moment, we needed funding, and the holding company, in turn, saw the potential in our development and wanted to introduce it to their other clinics. Of course, they had their own requirements: since the programme was originally created for one clinic (albeit an advanced one), adapting it for a network business required improvements. In the end, our interests coincided: we needed development, and they needed a functional product and IT specialists who could digitise their processes as much as possible. This is how we found common ground, and Dion Soft was born.

Within six months, with serious funding and organisational support, we were refining the product. As a result, we got DentalPRO of the second generation - not just an improved version of the first product, but a really more advanced system. It was with this product that we began our active development, and today we already have more than a thousand users across the country. And in our case, the user is not an individual doctor, but an entire clinic, and sometimes even a network of clinics.

 

It turns out that things are not quite like in classic start-ups, where an idea is born in a garage because there is nothing on the market, and you really need it. Did you go straight into upgrading an already existing successful business?

Yes, you could say that. Although it was difficult to develop massively on my own funds. It is not a problem to cover the needs of one clinic; we successfully tested the system in 10, 15, 20, even 30 pilot projects. But we had a desire to grow and scale.

I realised that the more users there are, the more individual requests there are. It was practically impossible to fulfil all of them on our own - we needed to increase the team, strengthen technical equipment, and increase turnover. It was unrealistic to do this without external funding.

At the first stage, Dion Holding helped us - by that time we already had a serious, well-developed product. And at the end of 2023, on New Year's Day, KAMA FLOW came to us.

DentalPRO, in fact, completely covered the holding company's internal needs in the digitalisation of clinics. All the more so because at that time the holding had an ambitious task - to prepare for the opening of the largest private hospital with an area of 65,000 square metres. This project has now been partially realised.

This hospital does not work under the state guarantee programme - it is completely private, with a serious level of equipment. When I first saw its design - an 18-storey building with a built-in hotel for patients - it became clear that this is a really impressive and large-scale facility.

Therefore, the holding's focus gradually shifted from clinics to the hospital. As businessmen, they assessed the situation: dentistry has been digitised, processes are working, and efficiency has been achieved. So, it is no longer possible to be a leading investor who actively manages the business, but to share responsibility with professionals in the field of venture capital investment.

This is how the demand for ‘smart money’, smart money, came about. They didn't need just financial injections - they had enough money already. If the goal was just to invest, they could have invested two, three, or ten times as much in the project, and it would not have caused any problems. However, their focus was different.

So they chose the strategy of a passive financial investor who gives the business an opportunity to grow and wait for financial results. And we, as professionals, came with a more aggressive strategy, oriented towards capturing the market, including the international market. KAMA FLOW themselves initiated the deal, we indicated our readiness to attract investors and simply spread the word in the professional community. At that moment, KAMA FLOW was actively looking for interesting projects, and it so happened that our interests coincided. This was not a situation where we were in dire need of money and were walking around the market looking for investment. In fact, KAMA FLOW came to us without a single pitch session on our part.

When our project came to their attention, they became interested, studied the business in detail and recognised it as promising. Now we are already working together with KAMA FLOW. 

 

What are your plans for further expansion? What markets are you considering?

We have several key objectives. Firstly, to continue our active growth in the Russian market. DentalPRO is already the best-selling programme in the industry, and our goal is to take the largest market share.

Secondly, we are building not just a medical information system, but an ecosystem for dental clinics. This is not just a basic product, but a lot of integrated services that are responsible for everything from interaction with patients and government agencies (for the transfer of necessary data) to increasing customer loyalty and the efficiency of clinics.

We have already integrated more than 35 products into our system, including solutions based on artificial intelligence. For example, automatic recognition of CT scans, analysis of images for dental pathologies, assessment of oral health and much more. The ecosystem continues to grow: as soon as a new useful service appears that can improve the work of clinics, we integrate it.

We are now paying special attention to services that can be integrated into our mobile application - it is already included in the product and is available for free on all platforms. This is a unique offer on the market, as other medical information systems do not have an application that works simultaneously for clinic managers, doctors, administrators and patients.

We are now looking for solutions that will allow us to expand the functionality for patients. We want the app to be not just a ‘pocket treatment plan’, but a full-fledged assistant that offers useful tools for health.

We are developing a loyalty system and integrating artificial intelligence-based assistants that motivate the patient not to miss appointments and complete treatment on time. After all, prevention and hygiene are always cheaper than complex treatment. Our goal is to help clinics get closer to patients and increase patient engagement. This is one of our key focuses and we are actively developing the ecosystem in this direction.

In addition, we already have a representative office in Belarus and will open an office in Kazakhstan in the coming months. In the long term, we plan to enter the markets of Turkey and MENA (Middle East and North Africa).

Our main customer is the dental clinic, not the patient. We do not create a price comparison platform or an exchange where you can choose a cheaper clinic. On the contrary, our goal is to strengthen clinics' relationships with their patients, not to encourage them to go elsewhere. A clinic buys our product to improve the service and loyalty of their customers, not to compete with their neighbours on a price platform.

Another area we are actively looking at is cosmetology. This is a related niche, and it is not uncommon for dentists and cosmetologists to work in the same clinic. We have noticed that the medical cosmetology market is poorly covered by software solutions: either there are simple services for manicure and eyelash appointments, or large systems at the level of multi-disciplinary hospitals. But the middle segment - clinics with a medical licence that provide professional cosmetology services - is practically not covered.

Therefore, having minimally modified DentalPRO to meet the needs of cosmetology, we plan to enter this segment as well. Especially since we have already had experience of working with cosmetology clinics and last year we participated in specialised events for this market. We have seen that while in dentistry digitalisation has long been at a high level, in medical cosmetology it is much more complicated. So we see serious potential there.