Brant Herman got the idea for MouthWatch by watching a single patient's reaction. At his father's dental practice, he saw what happened when someone was shown, for the first time, an image of the plaque buildup in their own mouth. That moment of seeing became the seed for a company built on a simple premise: people take dental health more seriously when they can actually see what's happening, and when care is easy to reach.

More than a decade later, Herman is still solving for access, just at a bigger scale. MouthWatch's intraoral cameras help dentists show patients what's going on chairside, and increasingly, they're showing up outside the dental chair entirely, in the hands of nurse practitioners, pediatricians, and school nurses. That shift outside the dental office is also what led Herman to build Dentistry.One, a virtual-first teledentistry network designed to meet patients wherever they happen to be, whether that's the couch, the pediatrician's office, or an OB-GYN visit.

"We think when you look at Americans who don't go see the dentist every year, those are populations that we really want to engage more actively and get them a starting point," Herman says. "When you engage patients and get them on a preventive track for dental care rather than a reactive surgical reaction, you save a ton of money."

The core problem Dentistry.One is solving isn't a lack of awareness. It's a broken handoff. A pediatrician might know a child needs to see a dentist, but the old model stopped at a verbal suggestion, if it happened at all. Herman's team is trying to turn that suggestion into a completed connection: a QR code, a URL, or a referral card that puts a patient in touch with a dentist on their smartphone, coordinates the appointment, and helps them find a dental home, all from the same visit where the need was first identified.

That coordination matters most for patients who are hardest to reach through the traditional system, including rural patients living far from the nearest dental office and families navigating Medicaid or CHIP coverage, where simply identifying a provider who can see them is often the first barrier.

"The old way was we would hope and pray that the pediatrician would even bring up oral health," Herman says. Now, some clinics are equipping medical providers with tools like fluoride varnish application, with Dentistry.One acting as what Herman calls a dental mentor, training non-dental staff to deliver preventive services while making sure patients still get connected into a dental home for the care that requires it.

Herman is quick to point out that the conversation around oral health is shifting. "I'm thrilled to see it shifting away from white smile, straight teeth into let's prevent infection and reduce inflammation," he says. That reframe, from cosmetic to systemic, is central to why Herman believes dental care belongs inside the broader health innovation conversation rather than siloed off from it.

Looking ahead, Herman says Dentistry.One is expanding its AI-powered preventive screening tools and building out relationships with retailers, aiming to put dental expertise in reach wherever someone is already making a health decision, not just inside a dental office.

For Herman, the work is far from finished. "It's still a greenfield problem," he says. "There's still so much to do, so many people who still need dental care, so many systems that aren't integrated." It's a challenge he's approached the same way since that first moment watching a patient see their own mouth clearly: meet people where they are, and make the next step obvious.

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