Automate Dental Supply Ordering with a Custom AI System
AI for dental inventory management eliminates manual counting and predicts supply needs based on appointment schedules. This reduces stockouts of critical items by over 90% and cuts ordering time to under 5 minutes.
A system's complexity depends on your Practice Management System (PMS). Integrating with a cloud-based PMS like Curve Dental via its API is straightforward. Connecting to an on-premise system like a Dentrix G7 SQL database requires a secure gateway but is a standard process we have mapped out.
We built an inventory system for a 4-operatory practice that was consistently running out of specific composite shades. Their lead assistant spent 3 hours every Friday with a clipboard. We deployed their system in 3 weeks. Now, a pre-filled purchase order waits for the office manager's one-click approval each morning.
What Problem Does This Solve?
Most practices start with a spreadsheet or a whiteboard. This is simple but error-prone. One missed entry for a used implant abutment can delay a $4,000 procedure, requiring an expensive overnight shipment and frustrating a patient. The lead dental assistant ends up spending hours on manual counts instead of assisting with production.
Built-in inventory modules in a PMS like Dentrix or Eaglesoft are just digital lists. They do not forecast demand based on your schedule, so you are always reacting to low stock. Staff must manually decrement items after each procedure, which is forgotten during a busy afternoon. This makes the on-hand counts unreliable within days.
General inventory tools like Sortly are not built for dentistry. They cannot track dental-specific units, like milliliters of bonding agent, and do not integrate with suppliers like Henry Schein or Patterson Dental. This means you still build purchase orders by hand on the supplier's website, which is where most of the time is wasted.
How Does It Work?
We start by connecting to your Practice Management System, either via a direct database connection for on-premise systems like Dentrix or through an API for cloud platforms like Curve Dental. We pull 24 months of appointment history, mapping procedure codes to the specific bill of materials for each. This creates the foundational dataset for predicting future consumption.
Using this historical data, we train a time-series forecasting model in Python using the Prophet library. It learns your practice's unique usage patterns, including seasonality and doctor-specific preferences for over 50 critical items. The model runs nightly on an AWS Lambda function, generating a 4-week consumption forecast for less than $30 per month in hosting costs.
The system compares the forecast against your current on-hand levels. When an item falls below its calculated reorder point, a Python script using httpx makes asynchronous calls to your top 2 suppliers to check real-time pricing and availability. It then generates a draft purchase order, automatically selecting the more cost-effective option for each line item.
This draft PO appears in a simple web dashboard built with FastAPI and hosted on Vercel. Your office manager receives a Slack or email notification, reviews the order, and approves it with a single click. On approval, the system places the order via the supplier's API. The entire workflow, from forecast to submitted PO, executes in under 90 seconds.
What Are the Key Benefits?
Eliminate Stockouts on High-Margin Items
The system tracks usage for crowns, implants, and composites tied to scheduled procedures, ensuring you never delay a $3,000 case for a $50 part.
Reclaim 10+ Staff Hours Per Month
Manual inventory counts and PO creation that take 2-3 hours weekly are replaced by a 5-minute review and one-click approval process.
You Own the Supplier Integration Code
We deliver the full Python source code to your GitHub. You are not locked into one supplier and can add new ones as your practice grows.
Nightly Inventory Audits, Not Monthly
The system recalculates inventory needs every 24 hours based on the next day's schedule, sending a daily Slack alert on low-stock items.
Connects Directly to Your Existing PMS
We build direct integrations with Dentrix, Eaglesoft, and Curve. No new software for your team to learn and no manual data entry is required.
What Does the Process Look Like?
PMS & Supplier Access (Week 1)
You provide read-only access to your Practice Management System and credentials for your supplier portals. We deliver a data map outlining the exact fields we will use.
Forecasting Model Build (Week 2)
We build and test the consumption forecasting model. You receive a report showing forecast accuracy for your top 10 most-used supplies.
Integration & UI Deployment (Week 3)
We deploy the ordering interface and connect it to your PMS and suppliers. You receive login credentials and approve your first AI-generated purchase order.
Monitoring & Handoff (Weeks 4-6)
We monitor the system's performance for 2 weeks, tuning reorder points based on live data. You receive a runbook for managing the system.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How much does a custom dental inventory system cost?
- Pricing depends on the number of suppliers to integrate and the type of Practice Management System. Cloud-based PMS platforms with available APIs are faster to integrate than on-premise databases. We provide a fixed-price quote after a 30-minute discovery call where we can assess these factors. Engagements are a one-time build cost with a flat monthly maintenance fee.
- What happens if a supplier's website changes and the ordering breaks?
- The system has health checks that confirm successful order placement. If an order fails or an API returns an error, an immediate alert is sent to us via PagerDuty and to you via Slack. Under our monthly maintenance plan, we investigate and deploy a fix, typically within 24 hours. The system is designed to fail gracefully, saving the draft PO for manual entry if needed.
- How is this different from inventory management in Dentrix Ascend?
- Dentrix Ascend provides a static list for inventory tracking. Our system is predictive. It analyzes your appointment schedule to forecast future demand and automatically generates purchase orders before you run low. It also performs price comparisons across multiple suppliers, which PMS modules do not. It is a proactive, automated ordering engine, not a passive tracking list.
- Do we need to use barcodes or scanners?
- No. The system decrements inventory automatically by linking procedure codes in your PMS to a pre-defined bill of materials. When a 'composite filling' is marked complete in the schedule, the system deducts the specific composite shade, bonding agent, and burs used from the digital inventory. No manual scanning is needed from your staff.
- Our supply usage is chaotic. How can a model predict it?
- The model discovers patterns in what seems like chaos. By analyzing 24 months of your actual appointment history, it learns the unique habits of your practice, such as which composites a specific dentist prefers or the seasonal spike in demand for whitening kits. It bases its forecasts on your practice's real-world data, not on generic industry averages.
- What happens when we add a new product to our inventory?
- The system includes a simple interface for adding new items. You provide the product name, supplier SKU, and link it to the relevant procedure codes in your PMS. The model begins tracking its usage immediately. For the first few order cycles, its reorder point will be based on a default setting until enough historical data is collected for an accurate forecast.
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