KELLS

1 in 4 adults in the U.S. has undiagnosed dental issues. Delayed treatments add significant cost to individuals and payors which is estimated to be $50 billion every year. In particular, tens of millions of patients among underprivileged, socioeconomically disadvantaged, minority, and immigrant communities have not had oral health checkups in years, and many of them suffer from untreated dental conditions. There are many reasons why people in these communities skip a visit to the dentist: poor patient mobility due to comorbidity conditions or disability, lack of awareness about oral health risks, fear of invasive treatments in dental offices, language barriers for the immigrant population, limited transportation options in poor communities, lack of adequate childcare options, limited flexibility for time-off from work, etc.

There is very large oral health inequality problem in the U.S. It manifests itself in big gaps in access to dental care which results in disproportionate prevalence of oral diseases, pain and suffering, unmet treatment needs, loss of work and financial hardship, and greater risk of developing chronic health conditions that are triggered by problems in patient's mouth, such as diabetes, cardiovascular condition, high-risk pregnancies, and others. These inequalities and gaps in access and care affect tens of millions of Americans.

KELLS provides the first remote dental scan powered by AI technology. Our affiliated dental staff go to convenient locations where patients are (e.g. workplace, community health centers, hospitals etc) and capture data including but not limited to x-ray, photos and medical records under 10min. Our AI system analyzes patient data to generate an oral health report with detailed information on risk, existing conditions and potential actions. The proprietary system is built with high quality private datasets with state-of-the-art AI models to identify various dental conditions at early stage, e.g. cavities, bone loss, infection, broken teeth etc. Its accuracy is up to 30% higher when compared against average dentists.

Following the scan, we offer virtual consultation for patients to ask questions and connect patients to dentists if any treatments are needed.

Our ability to improve access to care, detect problems early, educate patients and coordinate care will enable timely diagnosis and avoid delayed treatments to improve patients oral health while reducing cost and risk of developing chronic diseases impacted by poor dental care.

Based on the individual evaluation results, our AI platform also derive population oral health analytics for payors and organizations to gain insights on certain demographics and support optimal resource allocation with cost forecasting. 

KELLS solution is uniquely positioned to drive significant social impact by going to the under-served communities in urban and rural areas to perform screenings, deliver primary oral health care, empowering patients with detailed information about their oral health, and assisting them in getting necessary treatments. Its highly efficient and affordable solution can have a profound impact in reducing inequality, promoting equity, and closing access gaps in oral health care where access to care is difficult and not enough providers are available to support the members under low fee schedules. We will consistently surface existing and rising risks at the right timing to improve utilization of preventative services, avoid delayed treatments and reduce manifested risks on chronic conditions relevant to poor oral health. 

KELLS team combines a unique mix of skills, a deep passion for community health and health equity, and a successful track record of commercializing ideas and building businesses. We have top-notch in-house expertise in AI and computer vision, community dental professionals with 20 years of expertise of serving underserved populations, former dental operator scaling business to hundreds of millions dollars valuation.

KELLS passion for health equity has been recognized and acknowledged by our multiple partners among public and private entities, who worked with us to organize community health events, screen patients, and promote equitable access to dental services. We formed partnerships with some of the largest medicaid and medicare insurers in New York city and the country already. Since launching the solution, we have delivered to over a thousand members in the community and 60% of people have followed up with a dentist for treatments after KELLS scan.

The only options for oral health check-up currently available to patients from disadvantaged socioeconomic groups are (i) traditional dentist office visits or (ii) teledentistry appointments that include preliminary evaluation based on photos. 

KELLS AI technology in combination with our fast and lightweight service model provides the best of both worlds: broad access, lower costs and the thorough accurate evaluation that on par of the in-office exam. It unlocks a brand new way for people to access dental diagnostics like never before. The model can also be integrated into almost any point of care, e.g. primary care office, urgent care, school etc.

The risk data we collected from the individuals manifests to a population level analytics that derives critical insights to help deploy resources and budget at scale that improves health outcomes.

Most oral health conditions are largely preventable and can be treated in their early stages. Most cases are dental caries (tooth decay), periodontal diseases, tooth loss and oral cancers. Other oral conditions of public health importance are orofacial clefts, noma (severe gangrenous disease starting in the mouth mostly affecting children) and oro-dental trauma.

The WHO Global Oral Health Status Report (2022) estimated that oral diseases affect close to 3.5 billion people worldwide, with 3 out of 4 people affected living in middle-income countries. Globally, an estimated 2 billion people suffer from caries of permanent teeth and 514 million children suffer from caries of primary teeth.

KELLS solution contributes directly to the UN Goal 3 in following aspects:

• target 3.8: Achieve universal health coverage, including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all
• target 3.d: Strengthen the capacity of all countries, in particular developing countries, for early warning, risk reduction and management of national and global health risks

We will measure the size of population that gain access to early risk assessment and care coordination via KELLS solution to improve their oral health and related medical conditions. We also would estimate the cost reduction from timely intervention as opposed to delayed and complex procedures.

Our AI platform Clinic One analyzes wide variety of dental and medical data collected privately for risk analysis, diagnostics and treatment recommendations. We developed state-of-the-art computer vision models that automatically surface key dental issues including dental cavities (with severity estimation), bone loss, infection, gum recession, cracked tooth etc. It's trained on large scale dataset from offices with years of record on similar population cohorts and continuously improving as we serve more patients.

We are actively working on generative AI technology to write personalized notes and extract high level insights from the pool of data and results we generate. This provides a holistic and end-to-end platform that goes from diagnostics to care delivery at scale.

Making sure our AI is secure, responsible and ethical is top priority for our commercialization. We address them with following protocols:

• from raw data governance, we ensure HIPPA compliance and always have patient consent to leverage their data for development
• we collect datasets that represent a diverse and balance representation of the patient demographics to reduce bias from the model and use data augmentation to supplement
• we have human experts to review and sign off on AI results to ensure oversees and responsibility of the data we surface on patients 
• we implement enterprise grade security solutions in our platform and third-party softwares to avoid unauthorized access to data and manipulation of the platform
• we hire third-party firm to conduct quarterly review and auditing on the infrastructure to monitor system risk and perform timely fix if identified 

For the next year, our goals are:

1) Grow to impact at least 100000 individuals in low-income, dentally underserved areas to receive routine checkup and dental work that stabilize existing issues.

2) Form strategic partnerships with health plans and community providers to create large scale case study on increased access and utilization leading to improved outcomes and reduced cost

3) Improve AI capabilities to identify more conditions and risk factors to enrich our evaluation and integrate our results into medical records 

For the next 5 years, we aim to see KELLS being deployed to every state in the U.S. to conduct 10 million scans a year and reduce the overall cost from dental by 20%. We plan to do this by: 1) work with both private and public organizations and government agencies to open distribution channels to reach more populations; 2) equip our technology and infrastructure into providers directly to enable them to deliver the solution; 3) implement home-based care and preventative procedures to optimize patient long term health and form positive behavior changes; 4) leverage our data and analytics to help better underwrite populations and facilitate dental payment models towards value-based.

2 full-time

4 part-time

2 contractors

3-4 years

KELLS founders are Asian American and veteran. Our leadership has both male and female executives, so does the rest of the team which has approximately uniform gender distribution. The team is also very diverse in culture background with members originally from Asia, Mid-east, Europe and U.S.

This composition brings strong creativity and empathy in our work and we encourage future recruits to also represent different backgrounds and expertise while maintaining our high bar of standard in experience and skills.

We operate as a tech-enabled service that can be deployed both virtually (using existing providers) or onsite (in-house providers). We work with channels partners like insurance companies, employers and community health centers to embed into existing care access locations or set up pop up dental hub in neighborhoods that have high density of target populations. Organizations and KELLS work collaboratively to set up goals and metrics to identify member base that would benefit from our service and introduce it to them to drive awareness and engagement. For existing providers, we offer it as a virtual evaluation tool to process data submitted to us from various entities. 

KELLS is in early revenue generating stage passing 6 digit revenue towards end of year. We have deployed our AI-powered solution to the market early this year. Our revenue models include platform licensing fee towards enterprise clients and fee-for-service for each scan we deploy via insurance reimbursement or out-of-pocket cost.

Our patient acquisition is through B2B2C to leverage existing channels to reach individuals in need. To date, KELLS has evaluated over 1000 patients, majority are located in New York state. KELLS has formed partnerships with the largest non-profit insurer in New York City and are launching a pilot with the largest national medicaid dental administrator Q1 2024 to distribute our service to their members.  Our study shows 60% of patients who received KELLS evaluation ended up going to a dentist for treatments. We have a 4.8/5 satisfaction rating.

The company has raised capital from internal team and individual angels. We are looking to raise a seed round early 2024. 

Our current monthly operating cost includes:

• product development: $5000
• computing costs and software subscriptions: $3000
• salaries for 2 FTE: $10000
• marketing: $500

Total : $18500 / month

We plan to add more resources into sales and marketing to have a new hire on business development and participate in more conferences. Projected monthly cost is estimated to be:

• product development: $5000
• computing costs and software subscriptions: $3000
• salaries for 3 FTE: $15000
• marketing and promotion: $1000

Total: $24000 / month

We are requesting $100k funding to support our work. The funding will support us to launch new pilot projects with strategic partners. We have 3 states in the roadmap with national payors to launch and plan to use the funding to support them with equipment purchase, operating personnels, product development and data management.

We are excited to receive support from The Cure Residency to further grow the success we've had so far. We are looking to deepen our partnership channels and the mentorship with networking/intro opportunities would be beneficial to bring KELLS to more key stakeholders and decision makers in the health plans and provider groups. Also, as we scale, we expect to refine and iterate our financial models in terms of cost structure and pricing. We look forward to receiving guidance on those areas.