The Group Dentistry Now Show: The Voice Of The DSO Industry

Barry Wolfenson, Co-founder and CEO, Michael McCarthy, Chief Marketing Officer, and Brad Rand, Director of Dental, join the Group Dentistry Now podcast. The vTail Healthcare team discusses the growth of the vTail app in the dental industry and what DSOs and dental groups can expect.

Download the Vtail app here – https://www.vtail.co/clinical-areas/dental-usa

The vTail Healthcare team discusses:

What is vTail?
Why is dentistry the #2 healthcare vertical?
What are the benefits to DSOs and dental groups?
Most popular companies right now in the vTail app
How to sign up and get the most out of Vtail
Much more

If you are a dental group practice, a DSO or a dental company and have any questions reach out to Brad Rand – brad@vtail.co

If you like our podcast, please give us a review on iTunes https://apple.co/2Nejsfa and a Thumbs Up on YouTube.

Our podcast series brings you dental support and emerging dental group practice analysis, conversation, trends, news and events. Listen to leaders in the DSO and emerging dental group space talk about their challenges, successes, and the future of group dentistry. The Group Dentistry Now Show: The Voice of the DSO Industry has listeners across North & South America, Australia, Europe, and Asia. If you like our show, tell a friend or a colleague.

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Full Transcript:

Bill Neumann:

Hey, I’d like to welcome everybody back to the Group Dentistry Now Show, I’m Bill Neumann, and as always, appreciate you listening in today. Whether you’re on Spotify, Apple, Google, or you happen to be watching us on YouTube, we definitely appreciate your support. Without an audience, we wouldn’t have a show and we wouldn’t be able to bring on all these awesome guests that we’re going to have on today. So, a couple of these faces may be familiar to you and maybe a couple of them aren’t, but we have Barry Wilson, who is the CEO and co-founder of vTail and a fellow Philadelphian. So welcome, Barry.

Barry Wilson:

Hey Bill, how you doing?

Bill Neumann:

Thanks for being here.

Barry Wilson:

You bet, thanks for having me.

Bill Neumann:

And we’ve got Michael McCarthy, who you may have seen at a million dental trade shows before. He is a chief marketing officer at vTail. Good to see you, Mike.

Michael McCarthy:

Thanks for having us, Bill. Psyched to be here.

Bill Neumann:

And another dental industry veteran, we have Brad Rand, who is coming to us from the other coast. Brad is the director of Dental. Hey Brad.

Brad Rand:

Hey, how you doing? Thanks for having me.

Bill Neumann:

Yeah, it’s great to have you. I’d love to take a couple of minutes before we dive into the vTail story and to really get into what to expect and what’s to come once you download the vTail app. Barry, can you give folks a little bit of your background?

Barry Wilson:

Sure. Absolutely. 20 plus-ish years in the MedTech industry. I had somewhat of an a-traditional initial professional youth in between 20 and 30, Anderson Consulting, small company that I owned. And then to business school. And then post-business school I landed in the pharma world that then transitioned… At Bristol Myers Squibb and I landed within Bristol Myers Squibb at a large wound care company that they own called Combitech. And that started almost impossibly what has now been like a 20 year journey in the wound care space. And I went, after a big company, I went and I had the very fortunate opportunity to basically build up an organization within the shell of a publicly traded company. And so got to touch a lot of different aspects functionally within a business from sales and marketing and the clinical to regulatory and manufacturing and reimbursement. And so I quickly was able to touch a lot of different aspects of the MedTech business and a lot of that has helped to drive what the incarnation of vTail is.

Bill Neumann:

Which we’ll get to in a second. Thanks Barry. Brad, let’s talk a little bit about your background. I know you have quite a bit of experience on the implant side of the industry.

Brad Rand:

I started in dentistry way back in 1998, and it’s one of those places that just kind of sucked me in. I love it. I managed sales reps, sales teams, organizations. I saw such an opportunity here at vTail for the growth of this company, and that’s why I’m here. And I think dentistry as a whole really can take advantage of this app. So I’m excited to be here.

Bill Neumann:

Thanks, Brad. Mike, let’s find out a little bit about for the three people on the podcast that don’t know who you are.

Michael McCarthy:

Good to be here. And sorry, I might have just had a technical glitch there for a second. 25 years in dental, ran a couple healthcare ad agencies, marketing agencies, and have worked with just about every manufacturer association, numerous DSOs. I’m a dental nerd, what can you say? It’s my wheelhouse. It’s where I function best and how I came to vTail out of retirement.

Bill Neumann:

And Mike’s the chief marketing officer at vTail. So let’s talk about what is this vTail? I’d love to… So it’s an app. So once somebody downloads this app, what are they going to experience? What should they expect?

Barry Wilson:

I think maybe I’ll tell you about the vision of what they should expect long term and what we want for vTail to mean in the hearts and minds of the people that use it. And then I’ll let Mike and Brad get a little bit more into the specifics from a day to day currently from a dental perspective. Ostensibly, what we want for vTail to be is a unified hub that brings together the entirety of the ecosystem, specifically around healthcare medical products. So whether they be innovators, founders, clinical research organizations, commercial, obviously organizations, distributors, journals and associations, everyone, every stakeholder that in some aspect or another is related to, touches, or is involved with products make up sort of one side, if you will, of this multi-sided platform. And then on the other side are the healthcare professionals. And the goal is so that this consolidated hub becomes a resource, a resource for collaboration, for information gathering, for staying abreast of new technologies, for problem solving.

It’s built sort with a profile based infrastructure so that we can facilitate really intelligent matching and provide curated experiences. I am a, someday I’m a shoulder surgeon and I don’t do hips and knees and in orthopedics, but I’m really interested in infection control and orthobiologics. When I go in to vTail, my profile demands that I say, what zip code do I work at? What type of site do I work in? What’s my clinical specialty? What kinds of products am I interested in? Ultimately, will ask me what my clinical research interests are and other things. And when I come into the app, my experience is specific to me. I’ll see only things that are relevant to me. And I will be automatically, one of the core aspects of what vTail does is it provides almost like an automated Rolodex to local reps. So for all the companies that are relevant to me based on my interests, I’ll see the people that are assigned to me based on my geography and the type of site of care that I work in that the companies want me to interface with.

Bill Neumann:

So Mike and Brad, so if I’ve got this correct, dentistry was really the second medical vertical. So Barry kind of alluded to other verticals in healthcare that details involved in as well. So the question is, why dental and what does that experience look like?

Michael McCarthy:

Yeah, Bill, it’s a really good question. Dentistry, unlike any other medical vertical, maybe another close one would be veterinary or some dermatology, but dentistry on both sides as it exists today, we have private practitioners who are independent business owners. We have group dental practices, DSOs, where there is a business element or a corporate entity overseeing numerous dental practices. But that dentist, that hygienist, that assistant, that office manager still doesn’t have the services of being underwritten by a hospital system or a healthcare system. And that practice could have anywhere up to 10,000 individual skews in that practice or use 14 items to do a class two restoration or something on a patient’s mouth. It’s pretty ominous. And these clinicians did not go to school and get a business education simultaneously. You can only keep so many product brand names in your head. And vTail really became valuable to me to become join a part of it with dentistry because of the accessibility of resources.

If I want to look up a product that I saw at the Greater New York Trade Show, I can go into the vTail product database. It was an illumination isolation device or it was that new AI radiographic reading thing. Let me look that up. Oh, there it is, Pearl. And what you can do is our product database, since we are a mobile platform, all digital assets can be there as well. Everything from specs, instructions for use, case studies, detailed information, all that can be stored and available to you quickly.

Why I felt it was going to be a success and has been a success is dentistry has changed post pandemic, no matter where you practice. There is less free time. There are less clinicians available to do the work and meet the demand. So you need something fast, quick and helpful. And why it’s been booming with DSO clinicians are you could be in a satellite or remote office in northern Idaho and corporate is far away. Sales reps are seeing you maybe once a year. And you may need help quickly. vTail allows you to find companies, connect with their products and services quickly, and communicate digitally. It doesn’t have to be a live visit. “Hey, walk me through. My compressor or vacuum is not working and I’ve got a full day ahead of me.” And it could save that call to corporate, which could be a delay in a DSO setting of, “Let’s find northern Idaho some help.”

So as Barry said, he mentioned, imagine a Rolodex on steroids that is customized and tailored to your personal needs. It’s not some giant catalog or book, but our intelligent algorithms do the matching and you get the resources that you need. We’ve had some really, really fun stories from manufacturers who participate saying, “Yeah, this person usually has a no rep policy and they’ve called in or texted us and wanted some information.” It’s a new user experience that doesn’t take a lot of time. The relationship can carry forth. And I think both the dentist and the manufacturer, sales, marketing support can be more efficient.

Bill Neumann:

Brad, talk a little bit about why you joined the organization. And Barry touched on it I think right at the beginning where you talk about the Rolodex where you have access to the company representatives, but it’s a heck a lot more than just that.

Brad Rand:

Sure. And they both kind of keyed on this, and I heard Mike say it a couple times, and that being, it’s a resource. It’s about saving time and saving money for the clinician, whether it’s a DSO who typically has to go or maybe not even sure where to go for four or five or six different things, they can come to the app and they can find it on the app, whether it’s through a concierge service that we offer, whether it’s finding a product, whether it’s looking for a continuing education, which is coming soon, whether it’s creating a group or following a KOL led group. It’s all those things combined is what makes the app so important.

I’ll tell you the thing that I saw as a need, and I spent the weekend with the president of what I’ll call a small emerging DSO. And after spending the weekend with me, he sent me a message on Monday, “Hey, where can I find a brand X impression coping, who’s my rep?” I said, “Go to the app, look at the app.” And he said his wife who happens to, she negotiated a contract with a large dental dealer and she said she can spend three hours a day on something that may save this DSO three bucks. They can go to the app and find that. So that’s what I saw as the need for. It’s an easy way on the most basic level that allows the dental clinician or his ordering staff to connect with a company or find a product or find the rep.

Bill Neumann:

Yeah, that’s a great point, Brad. I mean the time suck that people, whether it’s office manager or whoever’s doing the purchasing, even it’s some of these larger organizations just to try and find whether it’s the best price or even find the product itself can be a huge challenge. I don’t know the number of SKUs in Henry Shine or a Patterson or Banko catalog, but I know it’s north of 150,000. So how does someone that may have been in another industry and now is involved in purchasing or procurement or ordering really be able to do that in a way that’s effective and efficient? It’s difficult to do.

Michael McCarthy:

And Bill, we’re working with large, mid-size and small DSOs right now who want to come on the app for numerous reasons. One, the app is free for clinicians and practice administrators. So no harm, no foul, risk. It’s a resource for clinicians, download it for free. What the DSOs on the corporate side are viewing is one, we’ll customize and put the DSO formulary of products that they specifically buy from. So it’s a nice easy resource on your phone. You don’t have to go through those. Hey, I love the dealers and distributors, but it’s a quick way. What impression materials can I buy from? What supplies can I buy from? Saving that, as you said, the time suck from there.

The other thing, and this is that we never intended this per se when building it, but we’ve got a nice mass of dental clinicians on the app and we’re brand new startup phase. But you know what today’s situation is like with employment opportunities. Our clinicians who are on the app, it may be a way to connect with the DSO in a way they may never have thought before and talk about possible employment or part-time. Can I pick up a day, a month at your DSO? So those connections I never thought of, but those can be HIPAA compliant, take place in a private setting that’s walled off, and it’s about developing and strengthening relationships.

Bill Neumann:

That’s really interesting. So we talked about the, Barry touched on it at the beginning, again, the individual custom user experience, but then there’s also the user experience for the group practice or the DSO where that can be customized to drive compliance and make sure people take advantage of the formulary and the pricing that they have.

Michael McCarthy:

Absolutely. And Bill, one of the things, there’s so many features. vTail has grown through the reaction of the audience, and I’ll let Barry talk about a new feature, RV groups. Dental, maybe not as academic high and mighty as some of the medical specialties, but I do want him to touch on that. But have, when you sign up and pick your areas of interest, a custom news feed is generated for the clinician or the administrator. So if I’m interested in compliance issues or billing and reimbursement or periodontology, we will serve up on a however many times we put news in there, little TikTok bites of news information that are relevant to you and your needs. You don’t have to thumb through the whole magazine. And a lot of that news actually comes from Group Dentistry Now, thanks to you. These are the relevant news bites that people just don’t have time to find.

And our newsfeed, surprisingly, has become one of the most visited parts of the app. People just check in on the daily. We’re also, and I’m really proud this is forthcoming real soon, we’re going to be the first center that compiles all continuing dental education in one place from a search standpoint. And in the DSO space, a lot of the DSOs underwrite the clinicians, CE, or offer payment towards, and CE becomes a hassle. End of the year coming up, I need three credits. I don’t want to travel far. I’d like to do something free and online, put those selects in and we’ll give you what’s available in your area. Or next year you want to take the family on a trip while you do CE, find out what’s happening in Orlando in August of next year. So we’ve been partnering with a lot of CE providers and putting it into the database so that we have a really robust searchable database of CE that you can’t find in other places. Magazines have their own lane of CE they provide, associations, groups, educational institutions. What we’re doing is just compiling it into one easy spot.

Bill Neumann:

So just so I sum this up, and I’m sure I’m going to miss something, but maybe for the people that trying to understand what vTail was or maybe kind of that first iteration of it, it’s not just products, it’s not just contacts with sales reps, but we’ve got that community and the connections with the groups. We’ve got the education component and then we’ve got the news resource as well. So you’ve got a lot going on there and really they’re all very complimentary. One kind of feeds off the other, it seems. So yeah, those are some great points, Mike, to really keep in mind that this isn’t just about which rep I should contact or what cotton roll I should use or impression material. There’s a heck of a lot more to this. And I love the fact that you can customize it for a group practice or a DSO. So I think that the group practice and the DSOs can feel confident that their individual providers have the information that they need at their fingertips, yet they’re following the guidance of the group within the vTail platform. So that’s awesome. Do you have any data on what a typical user profile looks like? So who’s downloading this app?

Michael McCarthy:

I’d like Barry to talk on the medical side of things, but I can tell you dental where it is. We have every age group from an 80 year old still practicing dentists to dental students, assistants, hygienist at all spans in parts of their career. But if I had to lump, Bill, it follows the platform that we’re on, mobile technology. So we do SKU. Probably 60% of the vTail dental users are under the age of 50 and are familiar with app usage, navigating apps. Every trade show that vTail has been exhibiting at in dental, Hey, I’m 55, so I am not the target, I don’t fit in that 60%, but I’m amazed when a new graduating dentist comes up and maybe they work for Heartland or SMILE Brands or something and they’ll pull out the phone, go to a QR code, download the app, register in front of me and they’re like, “Good, Mike, I just connected to you too. I’ll await the first push notification.” I’m not even that savvy.

But form follows function. And I got to talking to some of these younger dentists and they’re like, “Mike, we didn’t have textbooks in dental school. Everything was digital. This is how we learn, this is how we communicate to each other.” So again, I don’t want to sound brown-nosing, but when Barry approached me with his idea for this, it just made sense that there be a mobile friendly platform that addresses today’s dentists and tomorrow’s dentists and clinicians and corporations. Gosh, the app forced me to upgrade from my iPhone 1 to the 14 Pro just so I could use all the benefits. It’s about the experience.

And Barry let me do a bunch of market research before even stepping foot into building the dental. And we found that this was what clinicians wanted. They were more apt to engage with companies if they could engage with them through a mobile device. They didn’t want all that… They didn’t want their day disrupted. They love lunch and learns, they love visits. But the days of strolling into a practice or a DSO and just shooting the breeze and talking product or services, those are few and far between.

Barry Wilson:

But as the market shifts to mobile, one of the things that happens of course, as it should, is, “I’m a marketing person at company X. Hey, let’s make our own platform. And then our clinicians, our dental professionals will use our app.” And invariably they become inundated with apps. And so the thing that we’ll always have that I think is going to make the difference with us and propel us to our successes that we’re a consolidated hub. It’s not common for competitors to get together and say, “Hey, let’s make an offering that really makes sense for our collective target customers.” And so we’re doing that for them.

Bill Neumann:

That’s a great point, Barry. I mean this is the one place you can go to get everything. And I think it’s wonderful that you’re really building in a lot of things that people want, that they’ve got to go here for their continuing ed and they’ve got to go over here to their distributor or the direct company to order or even find out about products. I love the community aspect of it too. Brad, I’d love to ask you this question. So do you have an idea of, because you’re out there talking to solo practitioners and you’re talking to DSOs about the app. Talk to me about the different ways maybe a group practice would use the app versus or clinician at a group practice would use the app or the person that does the ordering at a DSO versus like a solo. What are you seeing as far as usage goes?

Brad Rand:

What’s interesting is because there’s, listen, as we know, a dentist, whether it’s in a DSO or private practice, goes to the office 7-8:00 AM, they typically don’t take a lunch. They have their head buried into a two inch by two inch space all day long. And then they go home at 5, 6, 7 o’clock in the evening. And so is what this does is it really, it’s really similar I think on the private practitioner side and the DSO side, because it just allows them the opportunity to get information, I think when they want it. And do it in a private way. For the DSO clinician, within the app themselves, they can send, as long as they click the right buttons when they sign up, they can send HIPAA compliant messages back and forth. And I’ve been told from DSOs that a lot of these is that, “Yeah, we know, we use WhatsApp and we shouldn’t be because it’s not HIPAA compliant.”

And so it’s just such a resource for all these guys. It’s about saving time and money and putting everything in. It’s the control in their hands. I think Mike has said it so well. I think there’s a whole group setting which I’d still like Barry to maybe touch base on because again, medical’s been around for longer now and we’ve just launched V groups into dental. And I think there’s a need there for that within the GSO specific practice as well. Barry, if you want to, do you want to talk about your success with V groups and how it’s been important to the medical side?

Barry Wilson:

I mean, our journey as a platform is that when you first start in the app business, you put out what’s considered the MVP, the minimally viable product. And so it’s something that’s good enough to get attention from users such that you can get feedback so that you can iterate and add and make really what people want as opposed to spending years doing research and then coming out with the perfect thing after it’s already too late. And so as we’ve done that and we’ve gotten feedback from our users, that’s allowed for us to become this sort of super utility kind of tool where we’ve got CME that’s coming, and newsfeed, and product database and all that stuff. But the thing that we heard from the beginning pretty consistently across different clinical specialties is that given that we’re looking to pair healthcare providers, dental professionals, what have you with industry, with the manufacturers, that’s at our core and that it has been a primary focus, what we’ve heard is if we can also allow for healthcare professionals to collaborate amongst themselves, that would probably be the thing on our platform that was the most engaging to them.

And that’s of course what we look for is bringing people in and having them be engaged in the platform. And so we thought about it for a while as far as what can we build, how can we allow for people to collaborate such that it would still have the potential to interact with industry? And where we’ve landed, we have kind of, we haven’t branded it V group, but we internally refer and externally refer to these as V groups and think of it as an amalgamation of group chats and Facebook groups. And there will be more sophisticated tech that’s built underneath it. But now what it represents is like-minded people can get together and form a group and talk about topics. Or an organization can use it and put together a group that ostensibly would be used as its conference app. Or a journal could make, we call them journal clubs, could put together a group and have members join and they could focus on a different article and an author a month.

But it’s ways to get conversations going and people interacting with the platform on a more regular basis. vTail has been used by associations and by groups as a conference app. We have several of these journals that have formed their own clubs and it’s just a new way to get people to interact with research. And we’ve got a bunch of KOLs that we’re seeding the market with that are either driving topical conversations or one of the most common things that clinicians will do on the internet is to share cases. And so they’re doing that within our platform as well.

Brad Rand:

Tell me, Barry, you brought a really great point with the journals. In dentistry, as we all know, we have study clubs and so we have a large organization of study clubs. And then within those organizations of study clubs, we have what I’ll call subgroups, sub-study clubs, maybe geographically located where a specialist may be in control of a study club that has 20 members and maybe have 120 members. And so they can create their own groups specific to their study club and they can talk about cases, they can talk about what’s coming up in the next meeting and all that stuff. And they were by invite only. So it can be a powerful tool in dentistry as well.

Bill Neumann:

So we’ve been focused really on the user experience and what they should expect. I’d love to talk before we talk about maybe what’s in it for some of the companies that are listed there. Tell me what some of the best practices, some popular companies on the vTail dental app, what are they doing and why is there so much engagement maybe with certain companies on there?

Michael McCarthy:

Sure. Fortunately have lots of examples to give you even being so new. I think my favorite experience is dental group, large manufacturer, operatory equipment, back office chairs, hand pieces. They’re doing things differently. They’re changing that, my father’s dental company brand that may have been stuck with them. The president of the company, Heather Trombley, really progressive, great leader, brings a vast array of medical experience when she took the helm five years ago. Bill, she put herself on the app as a contact person. So the sales reps are on there, the clinical support, the customer service people are on there for the company and by zip code you can find out and be served who yours is. But Heather put herself on the app and she said, “Mike, I didn’t know if people would contact me or not”, but that’s a new level of experiencing a company brand and she’s really good at it.

She has responded back to customers, non customers, and I think it speaks volumes that she was willing to speak with her customers, not only as sales environment, but how can we help you and your practice. So that’s a really nice story that I can tell you. Very popular company is we have Pearl, the artificial intelligence company where you review, AI’s, digital radiographic images and isolates areas you might have missed or underdiagnosed. Gets huge amounts of traffic. I think because it’s new, exciting, can add to the bottom line. And DSOs have been very rapid in uptaking that technology. So there’s a lot there. But we even have small mom and pop companies on there who don’t have the marketing budgets to advertise in the magazines, don’t have the wherewithal to partner with a large dealer distributor and give away that much margin.

So someone like, we have a small-ish lab in Pittsburgh called the Easy Gold Crowns. And if you send them a digital scan, they will mill a precious metal, high noble crown quickly to your design and get it back to you the next day. It’s by a family that’s been in dentistry for quite a while. But who runs it? Tom Mappin, big name in dentistry. Tom said, “Mike, what vTail, just by me being there has done for my business, that’s enough.” He goes, “People aren’t doing full grills with me. Some are, but gold is still the tried and true for the back molars and durability and longevity and new generations of dentistry are discovering it.” So Tom’s a really great partner. He puts a lot of information on his newsfeed, he puts a lot of videos. So in a sense people may not really know the size of his company, but he has a good presence and positioning to the dental universe at large.

Bill Neumann:

So there’s some great points about videos and talked about as newsfeed. So if I’m a user and I let’s type in composite, what kind of results would I get back? And then from there, what am I seeing? Do I have access to videos? Do I have a PDF of the product? Are there opportunities for maybe samples or contacting? Tell me what that looks like if I just do a simple search on a particular item like a composite.

Michael McCarthy:

Sure. And Bill, if we can, I’ll send you over a video cut, maybe we could attach it to this video somehow so the audience can see it.

Bill Neumann:

That’s a great point. For the listeners, this is going to be well worth jumping on, going to our website, Group Dentistry Now, or going to our YouTube channel to actually watch the demo. Go ahead, Mike.

Michael McCarthy:

What you’ll find is when you type in composites, you will get a list of materials. The companies that partner with us will obviously be there, but we’re an agnostic platform. You’ll also have generic composites or private label or smaller companies who may not have partnered with us yet. When you click on that product, Bill, think of it as a micro page comes up or a micro site where, I just want to make this clear, you cannot buy the product from vTail, but we’ll gladly send you to a place where you can buy it. We are not commerce tied right now. We want to give the buying clinician the freedom to buy it where they can. But you can have all digital assets. You could have a page on what are the associated reimbursement or CPT codes. You can have instructions for use. You can have videos and video links that how to use the product. You can have a CE video in there that the company sponsored and may not be getting much ROI on any longer.

So you do have the freedom to look at a lot of assets. And just real quick story. You asked, Bill, before this specifically how DSOs are benefiting. I’m passionate about the hygiene profession. I sit on many of the association boards. And a hygienist actually saved my life. But hygienists are not just tied to one practice anymore. And in a DSO setting, they may be responsible for two, three practices that they work in under the umbrella. One of our advisors, Dr. Emily Bogie and I were looking at some of the case studies and we saw a hygienist who was a temporary hygienist go into an office and there was a Piezo scaling unit there. Well, she’s well versed on a Cavetron. But she didn’t want to go to hand instrumentations. She pulled up a training video, watched it. It wasn’t that much different. She knows how to use the hand piece and she was good to go. That’s a resource lots of people would want.

When a DSO buys a practice, they buy the inventory of that practitioner and sometimes the clinicians along with it. It’s not like overnight a DSOs products and instruments just fall into that practice. So it cuts down on a learning curve. It helps people when they need it. And it’s really just limited to what you want to put up there from a digital asset standpoint.

Bill Neumann:

And Brad, you have quite a few group practices and DSOs that have already signed up. Is that right?

Brad Rand:

Yeah, and more coming. And it’s so interesting too. And here’s the reason, honestly, the reason why, one is a resource. But two, and again we’ve talked about this, but it’s free. It doesn’t cost the DSOs or clinicians or providers or any other staff to download and be on the app. It’s free for providers to be on the app, period. And it’s non transactional. And also I think Mike and/or Barry said it too, are agnostic to who the company is. So it’s free.

Bill Neumann:

On the vendor side of things, because we did touch on it a little bit. Some people like DentalEase and Pearl doing, would you think they’re kind of best practices there. What if we’ve got, because we have a lot of group practices and DSOs that watch and listen to this. What about vendors? Because we have quite a few vendors. So if I’m somebody says, “Hey, this sounds really good, we want to get involved.” How do they do that?

Brad Rand:

So yeah, I mean they contact me or Mike, they can do it through LinkedIn. Our email addresses are really simple. It’s Brad@vtl.co or Mike@atvtl.co and we’ll walk along the process, but it’s pretty straightforward. They sign up, we get an agreement in their hands. There’s a really nice onboarding process that we do so they can understand how to use the backend or all the functionality of what they would want to do from the manufacturer standpoint. It’s a pretty straightforward process.

Bill Neumann:

That’s great. So we’ll drop those email addresses in the show notes too. So you’ll be able to just click on through and contact Mike or Brad.

Brad Rand:

Or they can email Barry too. Barry will be happy to help.

Michael McCarthy:

He gets no emails at all. So he’s got all the free time in the world to answer those.

No, but Bill, you bring up just a really good question. Working with us. Yes. Are we a media vehicle? Yes, but we’re a communications app. Bottom line, that’s where we started, as Barry says, our MVP. So I don’t want people thinking breaking the bank. Your marketing budget. We all know what a full page four color ad in a print magazine costs. We scale how we charge for corporations to join the app. That’s how we monetize it. Is basically based on the number of sales reps or support people they want to put on the app. So that’s why we’ve had a lot of these startups, smaller companies who want a voice to be the early adopters. But we have manufacturing organizations with hundred plus salespeople who cover the nation as well. It’s a win-win for everyone. And the ROI is visible. We are a startup. I’m not promising anyone, you’ve got a whole new lead category.

We want you to grow with us and hey, bring your own customers on board. Make it even easier for you. Everything is protected. Once you’re on as a company, no one can see what you’re doing besides the clinician and you. Other companies don’t get to peak at what you are putting out there. If you have a promo or a specific vTail special. Everything is between the organization and the clinician. We fought hard, Brad mentioned, for that HIPAA enablement. We don’t want to lose that. So you really are in your own tunnel. It’s how you the company interact with the clinicians that reach out to you or the clinicians you bring on board the platform.

Bill Neumann:

Yeah, that’s great. So as we kind of tie this up in a nice bow, this has been really informative. Great podcast. Mike, I love your idea of having an overlay of a video so people can really kind of see it. We’ve talked a lot about it. Let’s take a look at it too. Tell me a little bit about what the future looks like. Barry, you talked about when you first started and how already it’s evolved, but maybe we kind of tie things up with where you see vTail going.

Barry Wilson:

Our entry into the market has been around the commercial side of things, but we would like, as I said earlier, to touch all the stakeholders. So at the very inception of technologies through to clinical research and tying up in the back end from, while we’re not transactional and I don’t know that we’ll ever be transactional, there’s certainly more we could do with regard to connecting the dots between selecting a product that you want to use on vTail and getting a push through to your distribution system. So there’s a lot more that we need on those various touch points. And then it’s about expanding and scaling throughout the entirety of healthcare. The United States is our primary market of focus, but it shouldn’t come as a surprise that we look to have total global domination. I’m sorry, that was such a good opportunity. But Yeah, that we would expand globally into other markets as well.

Bill Neumann:

That’s great. All right. I mean, I think with that, so first off, we know there’s absolutely no excuse not to download the app. So if you haven’t, it’s free. So make sure that after this podcast, or you can do it during the podcast, download the app and then we will have Brad and Mike and Barry’s contact information, email addresses so you can reach out to them if you have any questions on the vendor’s side or if you are an emerging group or a DSO and you want to kind of figure out, “Hey, how do we get our formulary in there? How does that all work?” It’s important to reach out to these guys as well. So Brad Rand, Mike McCarthy, Barry Wilson of vTail, thank you all for spending better part of an hour on this podcast. It’s been really informative and we really appreciate it. and thanks everybody who’s listening in or watching this. Until next time, this is the Group Dentistry Now Show. So thank you.