Grant: Applied Research and Development Grants - Level 2

Patient education in treatment planning is an important aspect of dental practice to ensure patientcomprehension, acceptance, compliance and informed consent. However, patients are frightened and confusedby viewing the pre-recorded live-action procedural videos and x-rays that dental practices often use tocommunicate treatments. Providing high-quality, realistic animated videos that clearly depict disease states andtreatments is a softer approach to inform patients. In spite of these benefits, only 25% of the 250,000 NorthAmerican dentists have adopted advanced video technologies like 3D animation for patient education delivery.Bitebank Websites, Inc. is a Toronto-based SME that provides dental practices with digital patient appointmentmanagement, reputation management, Internet marketing, content management systems and patient educationsoftware. Bitebank seeks to grow their Patient Education product line through the development of 3D animateddental procedure videos that (1) are produced in 4K ultra-high definition resolution to leverage emerginghardware that will soon become the norm and (2) employ a user-centred product development approach toensure patient comprehension and acceptance. In collaboration with developers and subject matter experts fromBitebank, an interdisciplinary team of dental hygienists, usability experts and animators from George BrownCollege will develop and validate series of dental procedure videos that meet emerging 4K standards and areeffective in communicating disease states, treatments and procedures to patients. Results will allow Bitebank toimprove their product to maximize patient comprehension, strengthening their value proposition to their dentalpractice customer base and allowing them to capture a poorly serviced market. This will result in increasedrevenue for Bitebank that will be reinvested in new product development and job creation. This work willbenefit Canadian dental professionals by increasing their revenues through increased patient case acceptanceand improved operational efficiencies, and will improve the oral health of Canadians through increasedcompliance with dental treatments.