If you needed a root canal treatment but didn't know either the price or the right dentist to go to, help is just a tap away.

My Dental Plan, a healthcare startup has launched an app that intends to bring in transparency by letting a consumer chose the kind of dental check that needs to be done, along with the cost of around 300 procedures. “When I was transferred to Bengaluru a year back and I needed a dentist, I had a tough time figuring the cost of a procedure in addition to the right dentist to go to,” said Anshuman Singh, a techie.

Mohender Narula, CEO of My Dental Plan who is also a dental surgeon said that as workforce is migrating from different cities in India, they are increasingly finding it difficult to go to the right dentist and make an informed decision based on the cost of a treatment.

To tackle this issue, this mobile app, which is along the lines of taxi aggregation services like TaxiForSure and runs on Android and Apple phones. A consumer can pay Rs. 250 every month and in return gets teeth cleaning two times, a checkup and Xrays any time during the year. Also, once a consumer is enrolled in this scheme, the average root canal, which costs Rs. 3,500, using this co-payment method, will cost Rs 2,200. Similarly, braces which cost around Rs. 25,000, will be done for Rs. 17,000 under this plan.

While this service has been launched in Bengaluru first, Narula has plans to take it to 12 cities in the next few months and onboard around 1,200 dental surgeons. For surgeons, it means more traffic and patient visibility (which helps in demand forecasting), said B.S Johar who runs Doctor Johar's Dental Clinic.

So, if a large number of dentists are a part of this programme, will it affect the quality of services? Narula insists that dentists will have to go through a 'stringent' process which would involve whether they adhere to proper sterilization techniques and also audit them to assess the quality of their processes thereby bringing in standardisation.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW