Ronaldo’s dentist uses AI to ‘fight’ diseases. ‘Missing link’ seeks investors

It is estimated that more than two dozen diseases, including diabetes or asthma, may be related to untreated oral inflation. Dentist Miguel Stanley wants to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help medicine detect these inflammations, with an impact on the well-being and health of patients, through Missing Link. The project, created together with a Ukrainian team, is seeking an investment of 1.5 million.

“Ten years ago I went to an international conference and started to become more aware of the impact of failed treatments, impacted teeth, old treatments and how this could affect my patients’ immune systems”, explains Miguel Stanley, founder of White Clinic and co-founder of Missing Link, with Ukrainian entrepreneur Alex Ousach.

“There is no Treaty of Tordesillas between the mouth and the rest of the body. Healthy teeth, but also diseased teeth, are embedded in our skull, in the bone, and the blood circulates. Therefore, the blood that passes through the heart, the brain, the prostate, the kidney, every minute, passes through that inflamed area”, he describes.

A situation that can have an impact on various pathologies. “A recent study carried out at the research center of the Egas Moniz School of Health and Science (Instituto Universitário Egas Moniz), in Lisbon, in 2022, led by Dr. [José] Botelho — and published in Nature Communications — describes that 23 non-communicable diseases are directly linked to oral inflammation. Among them Alzheimer’s, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, etc.”, he points out.

But if the patient is not in pain — “dental medicine is, unfortunately, in many areas a consumer product, it is the patient who dictates when to go to the dentist — and as “the average time for a consultation in Portugal, and in the world, is not ideal, and the first consultations often do not have the necessary technological support”, such as panoramic X-ray machines, these oral inflations are often not detected.

The dentist is aware of this reality on a daily basis. At White Clinic, he says, this type of panoramic X-ray has been used in consultations for more than a decade. “More than 50% of our users were completely unaware of the serious problems they had with their oral health, far beyond what brought them here: they came to whiten their teeth and have a huge cyst around an impacted wisdom tooth”, he reports. “Then a medical and dental questionnaire is carried out and it is seen that they have serious systemic inflammatory problems, and that doctors are scratching their heads, trying to find out why the therapies don’t work”, he continues.

Connecting medicine to oral health

Miguel Stanley talks about the “disconnection” between medicine and oral health. And it is to bridge this disconnect, this missing link, that Missing Link appears. The tool uses AI to, through reading panoramic X-rays, “locate potential inflammatory sources”, explains the vice-president of the Digital Dentistry Society, an organization that, among others, aims to educate oral health professionals about the use of technologies in dentistry, defining standards and good practices.

“For almost three years we have been training the machine learning model to identify four to five things that should not be in a healthy person’s overview: root canals; dental implants; edentulous areas (areas where teeth are missing); impacted teeth (teeth that have not come out); and finally, artefacts. For example, remains that may have been left after a tooth extraction, such as mercury”, present in old amalgams made of lead, he describes.

The AI ​​tool — which is being developed by a Ukrainian and Portuguese team of 15 AI experts — was initially thought of as a B2C product, but Miguel Santley believes in the potential of this tool for insurance companies, for example.

Today on the website, patients can upload their panoramic X-rays and, “within an hour — because we have a dental team doing the double check at this stage — a report is made. “We don’t make a diagnosis, we do a screening, an analysis and a suggestion: ‘You have things here that shouldn’t be in a healthy mouth. Look for a dental clinic that has a CT scan and a dentist who specializes in this to confirm the diagnosis”, describes Miguel Santley.

“We used the benchmark of genetic testing websites, which despite being very complex, the language used is for the common patient”, he continues. Missing Link “has been online for close to eight months. The feedback has been phenomenal”, he assures.

Link with investors

Around 1.5 million euros have already been invested in the project and they are currently looking for more capital to “expand the business and the team”: a total of 1.5 million euros, valuing the company between five and six million. “More than money, we are looking for talent and people with a proven track record in this area, because the worst thing you can do is simply be another branch on the investment tree of these large groups”, says Miguel Stanley.

“The scourge of chronic disease can be associated with outdated, poorly executed dental treatments or simply an oral infection that the patient himself does not know he has. I have faith that a good health group in Portugal will take up this, that they will stay with this project and that I can work with them in developing this vision”, he says optimistically.