Placing technology and AI at the service of people's health and wellbeing, from a mouth-to-body perspective, will be the mission of a Board that brings together 11 personalities, including Zuckerberg's father.
“What has brought me the most clients in 20 years is treating people well, technically and humanely.” The phrase is almost a decade old, Miguel Stanley said it to me in a past interview, but he would probably repeat it today. At least, it would still be true. And this has brought the dentist worldwide credit and recognition, as evidenced now by the invitation he received from Harvard University to be a founding member of the Clinical Innovation Board of the Harvard School of Dental Medicine (HSDM).
The goal is to think about innovation in dentistry, with the tools that exist and that are constantly and rapidly evolving, always at the service of people’s health and wellbeing. And Stanley, who has focused his practice on promoting care that consolidates the mouth-body connection – because he believes that looking after your teeth is not only a necessity similar to keeping any other part of the body healthy, but also contributes to self-confidence, wellbeing and, consequently, a healthier mind – was the obvious choice for the University.
The invitation “was made directly by the dean of the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, Professor William V. Giannobile”, he told SAPO, justifying the invitation with the “excellence of his medical practice, particularly in the area of innovation”. “It would be significant to me for you to join this inaugural group, as I know you would make a great contribution, given your vast experience in the field of advanced dentistry and the mouth-body connection,” reads the invitation letter signed by Giannobile, to which SAPO had access.
The idea is that HSDM’s Innovation Advisory Board – which will have 11 personalities, including leaders in dental education, clinical scientists and industry pioneers who can bring innovation to clinical care – will take on a relevant role in the guidelines and recommendations for the university’s clinical vision, promoting innovation in the provision of clinical care, clinical education in dentistry, results in the labour market and clinical research activities, the proposal explains.
“In medicine, technology, along with knowledge, is a fundamental pillar in the development of new therapies, in the precision and speed of diagnosis that can lead to cures and save lives,” says Miguel Stanley, who considers the opportunity to be part of this new international project a fast track to sharing with peers “experiences in the practice of oral medicine based on excellence and giving it back to the academy, its faculty and its students.”
“Digital dentistry, AI in biomedical imaging and pathology, electronic records, medical-dental integration, models in the provision of clinical care” are all areas in which innovation is key, in a group that includes only two European dentists, as well as Edward Zuckerberg, also a specialist and father of Mark Zuckerberg.
An associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine since 2018 and founder of the White Clinic in Lisbon, Stanley was first inspired by a lecture he attended in 1997 by one of the fathers of aesthetic dentistry, Ronald Goldstein (of Goldstein, Garber & Salama). It was at that time, while still at university, that he gained the ambition to create a similar clinic, with specialists for each area. And over time, technological evolution has added value to the concept, namely by using increasingly sophisticated tools and Artificial Intelligence to do a better job, treating not just mouths, but “the body, way of life, and the confidence of the people” who come to him as a whole.
Through AI, his methods allow for things as sophisticated as, for example, detecting oral infections that could have an impact on patients’ immune systems, such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes or Alzheimer’s.
Miguel Stanley, who has been practicing for 26 years, is the co-founder of the Slow Dentistry Global Network, based in Switzerland, vice-president of the Digital Dentistry Society and co-founder of Missing Link. He has given hundreds of lectures and webinars around the world and is the only Portuguese dentist among the 32 most influential personalities in Dentistry according to Incisal Edge.
*Originally published on Portal Sapo.
