From Operatory to Algorithm, How AI is Shaping Modern Dentistry with Dr. Amreesh Khanna

Gary Takacs: This is The Thriving Dentist Show with Gary Takacs, where we help you develop your ideal dental practice—one that provides personal, professional, and financial satisfaction.

Gary Takacs: Welcome to another edition of The Thriving Dentist Show. I’m Gary Takacs, your podcast co-host. I have an exciting podcast interview for you today. Those of you that are regular listeners to The Thriving Dentist Show know that I like to mix up the format just to keep it interesting for all of you. And this format today is going to be an interview that is going to be inspiring, going to be educational, and it is gonna pique your appetite for AI and how AI is positively impacting our profession.

I’m interviewing Dr. Amreesh Khanna. You may know him as the founder of OraQ. We’re gonna talk a lot about that.

Before I get to our interview, though, quick announcement. You know that here at The Thriving Dentist Show, we’re regularly doing virtual courses, virtual events. Sometimes they’re webinars, sometimes they’re panel discussions, sometimes they’re just conversations. We’re doing those all the time. If you wanna find out when the next one is, just go to thrivingdentist.com/events.  Those are always given at no cost. We do those CE events for you and those webinars, those panel discussions, in appreciation for your listenership. So there’ll never be any tuition. If you wanna find out when the next one is, just go to thrivingdentist.com/events. 

Now, with no further ado, let me introduce Dr. Amreesh Khanna. Yeah, Amreesh, how are you?

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: Doing great, Gary. Thank you so much for having me on your podcast. It’s a real pleasure to be here. I’ve been listening for over the years and so excited to be on here today.

Gary Takacs: Well, thank you. The honor is mine. We’re gonna have a fun conversation with our listeners. Many of our listeners, of course, will recognize your name and will know who you are and will know the amazing work you’re doing with OraQ. But in case we have those that are just getting on the bus, would you be kind enough to share a little bit about you and your background?

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: Absolutely. Yeah. So, I’m a dentist from Calgary, Canada, and I’ve been about 18 years in practice now. And love, love the profession of dentistry. And I know we were both equally joking—we’re both dental nerds. And then I’m a data junkie, I call myself, right?

Started my educational journey up in Edmonton at the University of Alberta. I went on and did a general practice residency for a year at the Montefiore Medical Center in Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Big Apple in New York. And loved the surgical side of dentistry—implants, sedation, grafting, wisdom teeth, all of that good stuff—along with all of our day-to-day dentistry.

Came back to Calgary, practiced as a GP doing that and implementing these types of things into locations that maybe weren’t doing those services at the time.

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: And met my wife at the time, who was also a dentist, and my brother graduated as a dentist. Then we bought our first clinic in Calgary in 2012. I always share an interesting entrepreneurial journey that I underwent that probably is a little atypical compared to your average dentist journey. But one year into us owning it, we had to literally watch our million-dollar investment wash away before our eyes.

There was a freak flood that hit Calgary—a hundred-year flood, perfect storm, one June—and where our practice was located was right in the middle, kind of close to some of the rivers in Calgary. We were in there shoveling water out and everything like that. So it was, looking back, one of those experiences that I wouldn’t wish upon anyone, but it really shaped me to think about dentistry, think about the business of dentistry, all these things in so many different ways.

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: So I say it moved me from being a dentist who owned a business to really being an entrepreneur and having to roll up my sleeves and get my hands dirty in a way that I never would’ve thought—and, you know, who practiced dentistry, right?

So fast forward that a little bit further. We were able to rebuild and more than double the value of the practice within a couple years. And I started learning a lot about the business side of dentistry and business in general, and leadership and financials, and did all these different certifications through programs on financials, and an Inner MBA program, and socially conscious leadership at NYU, et cetera. And then said, okay, you know what? I think we’re gonna dabble into another clinic here, so let’s get another one.

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: And this was right before COVID. So then I would jokingly say during COVID that it wasn’t my first rodeo when we were closed down, right? And so that set me on a journey that I know we’ll probably talk a lot about today, but really on—

I started just educating in whatever way I knew at that time. When we were shut down for three months up here in Canada, I said, you know what? I went through this chaos once before, and everybody else is now going through it their first time. So how can we actually come out of this better than we went into it?

And so I started a little Zoom call with about 20, 30 docs. It was on a Thursday, so I had a really original name, Gary, called Trajectory Thursdays.

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: Yeah. And then we just started talking—how do we bring peers together, learn from one another, whether they’re focused on something to help us grow our practice and come out of this better? And that evolved later into what is now my educational platform called AEPT Dental Education, which is really around one-to-one clinical and business coaching and mentorship with doctors. So I can really give back all the thousands of CE hours I’ve done, and hundreds of thousands of dollars I’ve spent from great individuals that I know, you know, and say, how can I help dentists put that into their practice Monday morning easier, and make a big difference in their practice life, and also their patients’ lives and their own personal lives. So that’s—yeah.

Gary Takacs: You know, Amreesh, one of the many reasons why I wanted to have you on the podcast is that you and I are cut from the same cloth in terms of being passionate about our profession. And if you’re listening to this and maybe you’re at that point where you could use a little bit of, you know, injection of passion, you’re gonna get it in this discussion today, that’s for sure.

But, you know, I appreciate you sharing your story about adversity. So I think it’s fair to say that it’s likely that any dentist is gonna face some adversity during their career. And in your case, it was a hundred-year flood. And you know, it’s not so much what happens to us that matters, but how we respond to it.

Gary Takacs: And I was influenced—our listeners know that—my grandmother, my maternal grandma, my mom’s mom, had a wonderful influence in raising me. And she taught me about adversity and taught me how to overcome adversity. I’ve had the privilege of meeting some really brilliant people in my life, Amreesh, you being one of those. And my grandmother may be the smartest person I’ve ever met. She had an eighth-grade education, formally, in terms of education, but she sure knew a whole lot about life. So I appreciate you sharing your story about adversity because it wasn’t so much what happened, but how you rebounded from it, for sure.

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: Yeah, totally. And that’s such a special thing that you got—you had to learn from that, right? And I think, you know, maybe some of us get a great person in our life that helps us learn about it, and sometimes we get faced with something we never knew was gonna hit us. That’s right—we’re forced to have to learn about it. But you’re absolutely right.

And I mean, not to say by any means was it easy, right? There were a lot of stressful moments, a lot of tears shed, and a lot of moments where you’re like, “I don’t know what we’re gonna do here,” right? But then, yeah, figuring out a way to just move forward, keep moving forward, and finding a solution, right?

Gary Takacs: Well, another memory I have from my grandmother is when she said to me, “Gary, don’t go for easy—go for worthwhile.” And she was right.

Well, let’s talk—let’s get into a discussion about OraQ and AI. You’re doing some amazing things. I know many of our listeners are following, are clients, and are aware of what’s going on. But just in case they’re hearing about OraQ for the first time, give us a little snapshot.

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: Yeah, absolutely. And so that’s a big part of my life now. Pivoting from what I was sharing before, I really started also diving into—hey, how can technology help us do what we do in our day-in, day-out taking care of patients? Help us do it better, right?

So I started that journey in about 2020-ish and started exploring—AI was a buzzword starting to float around in a bigger way then—and asked, how can we dive into a problem that I think so many of us dentists experience in our practices? That we all look at our patients with a little bit of a different lens, right?

You know, we both sit down and see a patient, and I hear this all the time, especially in a group practice where one dentist will pop in to do a recall with their hygienist, and they know that that doctor’s gonna talk to the patient about two things. But the other doctor’s gonna walk in, and they’re gonna talk about five, right?

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: So what’s going on there? Why is there this discrepancy? And patients, unfortunately, experience it as: “Is this doctor selling me on something I don’t need?” Right? And we’ve all had that story where a patient sits in our chair—and hopefully we’ve had more stories where they’re wowed by the experience we’re giving them and saying, “Why didn’t a previous dentist ever tell me this before?”

So it got me really thinking to say, well, why does that happen in the first place? We all go to learn so much and try to take all the experiences we bring and put it into practice. But ultimately, when I look at it—even four years into this journey now with OraQ—I look at the problem today and still really believe it stems from: evolution creates silos.

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: And so I say, as our hardware and diagnostic technology has evolved, we have all these amazing tools at our fingertips now to examine a patient, to analyze a patient, to do something different in our day to day. But none of those systems connect with one another. So it’s all left to us to piece it together up in here, right? And that’s where the discrepancy comes—because we all have different experiences, we all have different areas of interest.

But how could we bring what I call the mind and the wisdom of a thousand dentists to every patient interaction? And take all those things that we’re learning at all these amazing courses and institutes, and be able to bring that to the center of every patient interaction.

So it started with saying, “Hey, we gotta look at the disconnected data.”

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: And then looking at the trends that are happening in dentistry, especially in North America—continued trends around group dentistry, right? I mean, there’s an 80+ percent chance that a patient’s gonna sit down in our chair in the next three to five years and see a different dentist or hygienist in the same practice, same location, just because of dynamics around—you know, I know you probably have many conversations about that with other doctors.

And so piecing those two things together, it’s like we’re leaving a huge opportunity on the table when it comes to business growth—and a huge opportunity in the care, for optimizing patient care. So that’s what OraQ is really tapping into.

Gary Takacs: I’ll share a little bit of history that you’re likely familiar with—and some of our listeners will be familiar with—but this goes back to the mid-1990s. There was an investigative reporter for Reader’s Digest, and he was doing an investigative report on the dental profession.

This particular individual—the reporter—went around to, I may have the details not exact, but I’ll get the story right. I think he went to 17 or 18 different practices, presented himself as a patient, and asked the doctor to work up a treatment plan. And this patient—the investigative reporter—was in his mid-forties and likely had some things going on, you know, in his forties.

And the treatment plans from the—let’s say it was 18 different practices—ranged from: “You don’t need anything at all, you’re perfectly fine,” to a 28-unit full mouth reconstruction—and everything in between.

Gary Takacs: And unfortunately, he took a little bit of a slanted view and slanted the article toward, you know, “dentists can’t be trusted.” And that’s how it came out in Reader’s Digest.

I was an in-office consultant at the time, and I would travel and visit my clients. And if they had that issue of Reader’s Digest in their reception room, I made sure to deposit it in the trash can.

But you know, I think that’s what you’re speaking of when it comes to inconsistencies. And sometimes the inconsistencies are a matter of the doctor’s extensive education—or lack of—or postgraduate education—or lack of.

But that was—our dentists that are above a certain age will remember that situation happening in the mid-90s.

Well, today, I think consistency is one of the things that OraQ delivers, among others.

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: Absolutely. And I think that’s the key. One of our shared connections we were talking about earlier—someone I’ve learned from over the years too—talks about how the assessment is where it all begins, right?

And how do we understand the value? I know you’re part of the Pankey Institute and everything too—like taking the time to understand our patient. And we call it—

Gary Takacs: We call it co-discovery.

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: Exactly. Yeah.

Gary Takacs: And there’s a whole art and science to co-discovery. But the idea is that you, as the dentist, and the patient co-discover together what’s going on. You co-discover what might be some good solutions to that. You also co-discover the underlying factors that caused these problems in the first place.

Because you could do some great restorative dentistry, but if we don’t correct the underlying causes of the dysfunction, then all that beautiful dentistry you do is not gonna last as long as it could.

So all kinds of technology really do provide us some amazing—if Dr. Pankey was alive today, I think he would be as excited as ever about the technology that’s available today.

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. And I think—to say, what does OraQ do? It’s a technological solution that brings consistency and standardization to the co-discovery assessment process. So you have a platform to be able to do it.

Because our practice management software is not the greatest, right? Often we’re trying to look at a template or something in there, but we’re also layering it with some form or paper form we’ve created, or got from one of these amazing institutes.

So how do we bring that first standardized and consistent view around what we need to look at? What OraQ does is we start the process—we call ourselves a unified clinical intelligence layer, which means if we can tap into any information and data integrations we can get our hands on, we pull it all together into a one-click wellness profile dashboard.

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: So through there, we look at an assessment right off the get-go on this patient in up to seven key areas—so a holistic, comprehensive view of a patient. From everything in their medical to sleep-disordered breathing like obstructive sleep apnea.

We look at biomechanical risks—so cracks and wear on teeth, occlusion, TMJ, ortho—what’s happening with muscles, joints, the overall foundational architecture. Caries, perio, and aesthetics. All of that is comprised into our wellness profile.

But we get a one-click view, first of all, to say: where does my patient sit? Maybe they’re coming in today or they just sat down in the chair—are they in the green, yellow, or red here? And then, what should I look at now in that co-discovery process?

So I have an ability to conduct a risk assessment and exam right in there so I can understand in real time what I should be thinking of.

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: So, you know, if we had Dr. Pankey sitting on our shoulder telling us, “This is what you should be looking at and considering when you’re evaluating this patient further and understanding the journey that you want to create with them going forward,” we have to look at this information.

And that starts opening up the doors to the possibilities. And so that’s really what OraQ is—in a one-click, quick dashboard, you get to see all this information at your fingertips.

Secondly is—how do we communicate this now? It’s a tool that really helps us have that conversation, I think, with our patient around co-discovery. To really say, “Let me give you a way that gives you a simple visual and understanding that ties in all this information—other platforms we might be utilizing in our practice—and now have that conversation around what does this mean to you?”

And then of course, there’s always a business case to everything that we do. If you’re spending dollars on a solution like ours, we also highlight what is that million-dollar file cabinet sitting in your office—in terms of treatment you’ve recommended to your patient previously, but they haven’t seen the value yet or maybe haven’t said yes yet for whatever reason.

And what are some AI-uncovered opportunities? So that’s what you see within OraQ.

Gary Takacs: Dr. Omer Reed—you may recognize that name—was one of my mentors early in my career. And this was back in the early 1980s. Amreesh, he said to me one time, “Gary, most dentists are file cabinet millionaires.”

Remember, this is like—imagine 1982, right? And back then, the reference was, where did we put our paper charts? Because we didn’t have digital—we didn’t have digital charts. It was a paper chart, and they went in cabinets.

And what Dr. Reed meant was that if you could just get your existing patients to accept the treatment that they could benefit from, you would never need another new patient for the rest of your career. You know, you’re all file cabinet millionaires.

Let’s talk about a component within OraQ, which is a tool that helps with case acceptance.

You know, case presentation, case acceptance, is something that I know all of our listeners are interested in—how do we help our patients better understand the solutions that we’re presenting for them and motivate them to want a higher level of care?

I think we’d agree, Amreesh, that if the patient has pain, case presentation’s pretty easy. You know, let’s say it’s you as a patient and you’re experiencing—Amreesh, would you like that pain to stop?

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: Exactly, right. Mm-hmm.

Gary Takacs: Well, this is what we would do, and I could do that for you today. “Yes, please.” Right?

Well, yes, we do still see people like that in dental offices, and we love to help patients overcome that. Hopefully we can convert them to patients for life and get them on a path to not experience tooth pain.

But in reality, a lot of the things we can do for patients today don’t have to be done urgently. And case acceptance is elusive for many, many dentists.

Talk about how OraQ can be a wonderful tool—and I’m a certified nerd, I wear my nerd badge with honor, like you do—and I mean it as a compliment.

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: Yeah, no, I’m with you.

Gary Takacs: Talk about how OraQ can help in that one narrow area of case acceptance.

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: Yeah. So what you see in OraQ is a couple things we’ve learned, I guess I should say, along the journey—even having OraQ come out into market.

We always knew that it could support case acceptance. And we had data that showed that we were doubling case acceptance with the use of this tool.

And it was starting to open up, first, the clinician’s eyes to things that maybe they weren’t thinking about—which then in turn opens up the patient’s eyes into things too, right?

But what we found was, we needed to also support that case presentation, case conversation.

So through a risk assessment approach, it started with just saying, “Here’s a risk score. You’re in green, yellow, or red,” and we have a scoring system that we’ve created out of zero to five.

Then we realized that not every clinician all of a sudden knows how to speak to risk or what they need to say, right?

So how can we support them to understand what’s going on in your patient, what you should look at, and now how should you talk to your patient about it even?

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: And so that’s where it became a really central point—where you can actually pull this up, show it to your patient right in front of you.

We’ve built out integrations with practice management software, just launched an integration with one of the largest dental intraoral scanning companies, working with X-ray AI partners.

So what we’re trying to do is bring that all in one place. If you want to click the patient review button in OraQ, pull it up in front of the screen, in front of the patient—you can see X-rays, you can see photos, you can see 3D images, and the risk assessment dial.

You’ll say, “Hey, we’re just gonna focus in on cavity health and gum health today for this patient.” Because like you said—they’re a patient that says yes to the pain problem, but they’re not ready yet to go through this journey of full-mouth restoration.

So let’s just inch them there, right?

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: We can talk about caries and perio and really understand:

• Why, first of all, are they maybe not saying yes to those billings or that hygiene interval that we were talking about?
• Secondly, once we understand their why, now we utilize OraQ as a tool to say:

“Listen, I’m concerned about your health, because here you are in the yellow. Yellow to me—I give an easy green light, yellow light, red light analogy.”

Gary Takacs: Everybody, right? Every human recognizes that coding very easily. Red, yellow, green—we know what that means.

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: Exactly, right?

So what can we do to get you into the green here? Let’s work with maybe the barrier that was causing you to not come in yet.

And of course, there are a multitude of things—time, dollars, insurance, all that other stuff—but let me help you understand at least why you truly need this.

I’m here because I want to focus on first treating the problem—because we’re waving the yellow flag right now saying, “Let’s deal with the problem before it becomes a red.”

And also, let’s keep you in the green.

So by the way, we can do X, Y, and Z with some home care, bringing you in at these intervals to help you so you don’t have to worry about this problem ever again.

And so it’s really encouraging that conversation—back to your initial question—of how does this help with case acceptance, right?

So whether we’re talking about that million-dollar file cabinet again, or we’re talking about new things that we informed ourselves of today through the power of this technology—like, “Wow, I never even thought about considering obstructive sleep apnea before I gave them a night guard,” or, “Maybe I should consider ortho even though they’re an adult and have no aesthetic concerns—there might be a reason for that here.”

So now it opens up that conversation in a bigger way.

Gary Takacs: Ah, so cool.

You know, something else I’m excited about is—I’ve felt all along that there has sort of been a lack of connection between our medical colleagues and our dental colleagues.

It seems like they’re just in their own orbits. Our physicians are over here, and our dentists are over here, and they aren’t really integrating with one another.

And that really baffled me. But I have a lot of friends that are physicians, and recently I had a conversation with a friend of mine who’s a physician.

And he said, “Gary, do you know how much education I got in medical school about the mouth?”

So do you know the answer to that, Amreesh? Do you know how much?

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: Probably next to none.

Gary Takacs: It was a one-hour overview lecture. One hour! So, this is in—but think about all the things that a physician has to go through in their medical training. You know, all the different things—rotations, everything else.

Well, apparently, at least at this particular medical school, it was covered by a one-hour overview lecture. That was it.

So I’ve said before, it seems to me like many physicians don’t even realize the patient has a mouth. And now I know a little bit more why.

And that’s why I love the fact that we’re changing that now, and we’re creating more integration between what’s going on on the medical side and what’s going on on the dental side.

And I know that medical-dental integration is one of the things that OraQ helps with as well. Am I correct?

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: Yeah, absolutely. You know, something that I’m really excited about right now is this: medical-dental integration.

And I’ll say this has been a core piece to our philosophy from the beginning. As we share our dental nerd badge—I went to dental school at the University of Alberta, where medical and dental were together for our first two years. And so I geeked out on all things medical.

Gary Takacs: That is so cool.

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: And so—

Gary Takacs: Case Western in Cleveland—yeah, when their dental school was due for a huge facelift (it was the original dental school from the caveman era)—when it was time for the upgrade, they decided to integrate with Cleveland Clinic. And they have that kind of integration on the campus. You experienced that in Alberta?

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: Yeah, exactly. And I loved that part of it. And you’re right—our medical counterparts didn’t get much of anything on the dental side, because we would do the medical plus the dental. And then, you know, we all kind of part ways when we go into preclinical and clinical in third year and fourth year.

But what I found was, we learn about all this—we know there are so many powerful connections between medical diseases and dental diseases. And now there are all these buzzwords floating out there: precision health, precision care, genomics—how do we really move from a reactive care model of health to a health-first management approach?

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: But up until now, I feel like it was theory. Those who were excited about it would run with it, because they had an interest in it. But it wasn’t possible to scale to the masses of physicians and dentists—because like you said, they’re in their own worlds.

And rightfully so. They’re dealing with so many deep things on both sides—they can only process so much.

But what I’m so excited about now, where I think we are here ending out 2025, is the future ahead of us is possible now—because of data integration.

Because we can actually bring data together. And through solutions like OraQ—and many others out there that are working to say, “How do we mesh the data together?”—I can actually get a hold of medical data now.

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: So we were working with the American Dental Association and some Chief Dental Leads at the Department of Defense on some medical-dental use cases this year.

We were one of the first dental companies that actually connected with Epic and Oracle, and did a medical-dental data exchange on obstructive sleep apnea, for example.

So now think about the power of data connectivity—replacing the need for a doctor or a dentist to have to write a lengthy report that the counterpart probably doesn’t have the time to read, or doesn’t understand half of, right?

And we’re just creating a connection all of a sudden through data alone.

And so, in our system, if we can enrich the medical data and say:

• “Dentist, this is what you need to know.” But also:
• “We’re seeing risk factors here that aren’t under control. Maybe there’s a medical thing, or a sleep issue. How do we ping that back to the physician?”

So that’s the future we’re really building.

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: And when I started OraQ, we were part of a big technology accelerator called the SMILE Health Accelerator—put on by CareQuest Innovation Partners and MATTER Health.

We were part of the inaugural cohort. Medical-dental integration was a key part of their mandate, of course, with those two parties coming together.

And we were at HLTH—which is the largest digital health conference that started in the U.S.—as a dental presence there in 2023.

I’m proud to say this year, 2025, they put on—together with other partners in the industry ecosystem—an Oral Health Pavilion, to really push that oral health is part of systemic health.

OraQ was honored to receive a 2025 Best in Class Digital Health Company Startup in the dental space at HLTH this year.

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: And it’s the first time now that everybody is talking about medical-dental integration with an acronym—it’s MDI.

People are throwing it out left, right, and center.

It’s exciting—because the medical side is listening, payers are listening, educators are listening, researchers are listening.

It takes time, of course, to build all that until it filters down to a usable day-to-day level.

Gary Takacs: And patients are benefiting.

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: Exactly, right.

Gary Takacs: Well, you know, I’ll give our listeners a tip. I’m gonna make a book recommendation. And, you know, for those of you that still like to read—as I do—it is in book form. But you can also listen to it…

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: All my paper books—still behind me, right?

Gary Takacs: Both of our backgrounds—for obviously people listening to this in an audio format as a podcast—but Amreesh and I are on Zoom together, and we can see each other’s background.

Both of our backgrounds: our bookcases are filled to the brim.

But one of my favorite books of all time—and this is a consumer book, not a technical book—it’s called Beat the Heart Attack Gene. Beat the Heart Attack Gene by Dr. Bradley Bale—B-A-L-E—Brad Bale, MD.

And there’s a quote in the book, Amreesh, that I think is the coolest quote in the world for a dental office. The quote is—remember, this is from Brad Bale, MD—he says:

“All good health begins with the mouth.”

All good health begins with the mouth.

Now, I’ve recommended to my clients that they go online, find a source where a company can print that out in a stencil, and stencil that somewhere in your office—that quote:

“All good health begins with the mouth.” —Bradley Bale, MD.

And by the way, in your reception room, put copies of his book Beat the Heart Attack Gene, because it’s an amazing book about the oral-systemic connection.

And a physician is telling the public that if you’re going to have great health, we’ve gotta start with the mouth.

How cool is that?

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: That is cool. I’ve jotted the name down too. I’m definitely gonna—

Gary Takacs: You’ll love it. You know, it’s for the public. It was a New York Times bestseller. But he gives all kinds of examples in his practice about patients that had systemic health issues that had a direct, causal relationship to an infection in their gums.

So, I mean—very, very, very cool.

And I’ve had some clients take me up on that suggestion and put that somewhere on a wall that patients walk by. And you know, they ask questions—“What does that mean?”—and that opens up a conversation.

And some people just get it. It’s like, “That’s why I’m here. All good health begins with the mouth. I’ve gotta focus on this.”

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: Love that. Yeah, that’s awesome.

Gary Takacs: You know, we have to remember that our patients come into our office with all levels of background and understanding.

One of Dr. Pankey’s concepts was: “Meet them where they are.” And such a nonjudgmental, respectful idea—read people, meet people where they are.

And I’ll give another tip to our listeners on case acceptance. One of the best things you can do is ask questions.

Dr. Reede used to say, “If you have to speak, ask questions.”

And as you ask questions, it requires a response from the patient. And then it becomes a true dialogue—you know, a back-and-forth exchange and engagement.

But I love what you’re doing on the medical-dental integration, and I see more and more of this coming together in our professions—truly benefiting the patients. Really, really, really neat.

Now, let’s pivot and talk about AI.

AI is—well, for our listeners, there’s a huge curiosity about it right now, and a huge interest in:

“How do I… I’m beginning to understand it, but how do I apply this in my practice?”

So—it’s in your URL. You know, your URL is OraQ.ai.

Talk about how you’re using AI.

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: Yeah. You know, I think we’re in a very interesting time when it comes to AI in general and how rapidly it’s advancing. Even in the past few years, when I started this journey—and many of the other dental clinical AI solutions out there—we built things from scratch. We had to build our own algorithms, build out the entire process behind it.

And now you look at what’s happening with big players like Google and OpenAI—they’ve accelerated the pace at which AI is a part of our lives every single day, right?

And if you’re using ChatGPT or Gemini in any way, you know that—it’s at our fingertips now. We don’t Google things now—we ChatGPT them, right?

Gary Takacs: There’s emerging evidence showing that people are using tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok for search. And they don’t want just the answer—they want to know it at a deeper level.

They want to know—like they’re not just looking for “dental implants near me,” they want to know, “Can a dental implant benefit me? And how?”

So they’re asking deeper levels of questions, which means the curiosity on the patient’s end is going to allow that patient to arrive in your office with more understanding and more awareness. You don’t have to start from scratch anymore.

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: Exactly. And I think we’re at a stage right now in the profession—and of course, I’m living and breathing this world day in and day out—AI is here. It’s part of our day-to-day. It’s going to become part of our gold standard going forward in so many ways.

But right now, it’s about: how do we responsibly use it, ethically use it, ensure we’re doing it in a trustful, privacy-secure manner, right? I think that’s where there are still concerns—people are wondering, “How do I trust it? How do I know what it’s about?”

And when I’m teaching or educating or speaking on these things, for me it’s like—there’s so much that goes on in the background of all that, and you don’t need to know every single technical detail.

But it’s really about us—dentists—we have an opportunity to lead that change.

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: And I think that’s what I’m really excited about. If you want to know how to implement this into your practice, it begins with educating ourselves and our teams around what these systems do.

And how do I work with it in a way where I don’t blindly trust it, right? Because that’s when scrutiny will come from an individual or a patient.

If they don’t want to trust what a system is showing on an X-ray or a tool like OraQ, but we know how the system works—then we’re in a much better place.

The good old “garbage in, garbage out” concept applies here too—especially in anything that’s data analytics-driven. So how do we educate ourselves first on how to use it?

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: How do we educate our teams on the power of these solutions—but use them as tools, not as replacements?

If these solutions can help us remove time from mundane tasks—for example, in OraQ, if you currently have to click through five different places in your practice management software and five other systems to get the data—well, I’d rather you click one place and get the data.

So you can spend more time having that conversation with your patient. That’s what’s most important.

So that’s the power in these tools. We’re still in the early stages of a lot of this technology, and there’s so much power that’s going to be built into it as we move forward—predictive analytics, disease progression modeling…

I call it the digital dental twin and your crystal ball, right?

So how do we really build that?

That’s the power that’s coming. But today, let’s be part of the change. Let’s educate ourselves, understand how to adopt this, and be at the forefront of it.

Because if we don’t, we’re going to be forced to anyway—because, like you said, the patient’s coming in already GPT-ing exactly what we’re telling them.

Gary Takacs: I mean, there are so many practical applications for AI. I’ll give an example that I think causes a lot of dentists to have memories—of how this happened in the past.

Amreesh, imagine a new patient showing up in your practice with a dental implant that was placed 20 years ago but was never restored. So he’s got this implant—never restored. And now that patient is in your office, wanting to know if that could be restored.

And the patient, of course, has no idea. They don’t remember the dentist that placed the implant 20 years ago. They don’t know what kind of system that implant is.

And what does the dentist do—without some technology tools at that point, right?

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: Yeah.

Gary Takacs: But instead—what can AI do for them?

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: Yeah, I mean—that’s me. Otherwise, I’m calling my rep up and saying, “Can you check out this X-ray? Do you know what this looks like?”

And then they’re circulating it around.

And this is the cool thing about AI now—we can probably get 90% of the way there, at least. There are sites out there—I know I’d used “whatimplantisthis.com” before and things like that.

But now, in theory, you could probably even throw it into open models and get an idea, right?

Gary Takacs: You’re still being a detective.

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: Exactly. You’re still narrowing the possibilities with answers—with solutions.

Gary Takacs: Yeah.

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: And these implant companies are working on that kind of stuff now too. I know Straumann is doing some cool things around incorporating this technology and a database of implants—tracking the types and longevity of certain implants.

So they’re building these databases. But it all comes back to the data, right? How do we use the data? And how do we now really capitalize on the value of it?

Gary Takacs: What I love about this whole discussion is that I believe every dental office on the planet experiences a struggle—and it’s kind of an eternal struggle.

What I mean is—it’s the struggle between efficiency and connection.

And I think we’d all agree that we have to be efficient. We have to be efficient as a practice, as a business—out of respect for our patient’s time.

But if we’re so efficient that a patient feels processed—that’s not good.

We also have to have connection. Truly—if we’re going to make a difference in our patient’s life, we have to connect.

But if we take that to the extreme—we’re not going to sit around all afternoon, hold hands, and sing Kumbaya.

So we need a balance between efficiency and connection.

And I think—and correct me if I’m wrong—but I think tools like what OraQ does provide efficiency so we have more time for connection.

So we can actually slow down—let’s say your patient Linda is taking care of an elderly mother right now. We know she’s challenged with caregiving responsibilities.

Now we have the time to say, “Linda, I’ve been thinking a lot about you. How’s it going with your mom?”

Now we have the time to do that.

And that’s what I think is the cool outcome that happens with tools like OraQ—it gives us time to humanize that and provide the connection our patients crave.

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: Exactly. Because yeah—we’re not wasting time in the data review and collection stage.

It’s at our fingertips.

Gives me something. So yeah—I couldn’t agree with you more there.

Gary Takacs: I spent some time prepping for this interview on your website, and I’d like to provide your—well, we’ll put this in the show notes for our listeners, so if you’re driving, don’t take your hands off the wheel. But it’s actually pretty easy to remember: it’s oraq.ai. 

Is it okay if I provide your email address as well, Amreesh?

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: Yeah, absolutely.

Gary Takacs: So dramreesh.com—actually, that’s your personal URL.

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: Yep, you got it. Yeah. And my personal email is amreesh@oraq.ai.

Gary Takacs: Ah, perfect. Combine the two, and you got it. We’ll put those in the show notes.

But I discovered on your website that you’ve got a very cool demo. I’d like to encourage our listeners to do a demo of OraQ. Would you talk a little bit about what they’re going to experience when they do a demo?

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: Yeah, thank you. We would love the opportunity to do that. You can book a call with myself or one of my team members anytime—right off our website—to get a taste of what OraQ looks like, how it can really help to support and optimize.

We say:

• One—with treatment planning. So we’ll help you do the right care at the right time for the right reasons on your patients.
• And secondly—everything we talked about in terms of patient communication. So that you can see how that tool can be used to have a better conversation and allow you to have more meaningful conversations, and ultimately get patients to say yes to the care that you know is best for their health.

Gary Takacs: Yeah, I want to emphasize—if you listen to The Thriving Dentist Show, you’re gonna love doing that OraQ demo. So let me encourage you to do that. It’s on the website, it’s on your homepage. You’ll learn an awful lot.

Alright, as we kind of come to the finish line today, I want to take a minute and thank you.

Thanks for pushing the envelope on technology. Thanks for your passion for our amazing profession—it’s evident in everything that you do. And thanks for your heart.

You are clearly one of those people that has a service heart at the core of all the work that you do. And it shows—it shows in your work.

And thank you for the privilege of your time today in this interview.

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: Thank you so much too, Gary. It really means a lot having me on your show here, and I really appreciate that. I hope your listeners found something exciting today. Thank you.

Gary Takacs: I’ll put you on the spot—and I’m doing it intentionally. Can we circle back in a little bit and get you back on the show?

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: Would love that. Absolutely.

Gary Takacs: Good answer. That’s the right answer.

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: [laughs] Yeah, thank you.

Gary Takacs: Couple other things—you’re active on some social channels. So OraQ is active on LinkedIn, also active on Instagram.

We’ll actually put those social handles in the show notes. So if you go to the show notes, you’ll find all of those connections.

But again, oraq.ai  is the main URL. dramreesh.com is your personal site. And then the combination of those two is your email address.

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: Yeah, you got it. And please reach out. I’d love to have conversations with anybody that wants to learn more—just to chat in the same way that we did today.

Gary Takacs: Was a lot of fun.

Dr. Amreesh Khanna: Pleasure. Being excited about dentistry!

Gary Takacs: Yeah, this was a lot of fun.

As we wrap up, I want to thank all of our listeners for the privilege of your time today. We appreciate each and every one of you.

We’re early in the year—let’s make 2026 your best year yet. Here’s to making that happen. And I’m looking forward to connecting with you on the next Thriving Dentist Show.