AI for dental practices: patient records stay in the practice.

A dental practice holds years of a patient's life: medical history, medications, radiographs, treatment plans, health fund details and what they can afford. Dentists and front desk staff spend hours turning chairside notes and charts into treatment plans, letters and recall messages, which is exactly the work AI does well. An Ermos AI unit does that work inside the practice, so the patient record never has to leave it. Our current unit is Dominion.

One boundary first: Ermos units help with documentation and administration. They do not diagnose, plan treatment or read radiographs. Clinical judgement stays with the dentist.

See what leaves your practice. Treatment plans, clinical notes, health history forms, radiology reports, recall lists and more, marked up item by item to show what goes to ChatGPT or Claude and what stays on Ermos: AI data leakage in dental practices.

What your practice does with it

Treatment plans and fee estimates

Turn the chart and the dentist's recommendations into a plain-English plan with the estimate and financial consent wording.

Clinical notes

Write up chairside shorthand into complete notes in your format, for the treating dentist to check and sign.

Recalls and reminders

Draft check-up recalls, hygiene reminders and unfinished treatment follow-ups in batches from your templates.

Specialist referrals

Draft referrals to oral surgeons, orthodontists, endodontists and periodontists from the chart.

Health fund and patient correspondence

Draft replies to patients and health fund queries from the record, for staff to check before sending.

Practice knowledge

Staff ask how the practice handles an item, a sterilisation step or a complaint, and get the answer from your own documents.

The compliance frame, plainly

Health information is sensitive information under the Privacy Act 1988, and a business that provides a health service and holds health information is covered by the Act whatever its turnover; the OAIC lists a dentist among its examples. The Dental Board's Code of conduct asks practitioners to keep patient information confidential, to obtain informed consent including financial consent, and to hold health records securely and free from unauthorised access. Ahpra's guidance on AI says the practitioner remains responsible, must apply human judgement to AI output and should know where patient data is stored and whether it trains the model. In NSW the Health Records and Information Privacy Act 2002 adds its own principles. Keeping the AI inside the practice keeps all of these simple. Our patient data guide covers the detail.

This page is general information and is no substitute for legal advice on your own practice.

Built for how a practice actually runs

Your Ermos unit is installed on your network and fully managed: monitoring, model updates and support included, with ErmosIQ learning your templates, fee schedule and letter conventions. Dentists, hygienists, assistants and the front desk all use it, with no per-seat licences.

The use case library

Process-level guides to running specific workflows on an Ermos unit, each on its own page. We add to this library as clients show us new ways they work.

Dominion is priced per unit, per month on a 12-month term, sized to your practice: unlimited users, no per-user licences, no usage charges. Exact pricing is confirmed in the scoping consultation.

Common questions

Can a dental practice use ChatGPT for treatment plans and patient letters?
Pasting a chart or treatment plan into a cloud AI service sends health information to that provider, which the practice has to be able to justify under the Privacy Act. Ahpra's guidance asks practitioners to know where patient data goes and whether it trains the model. An Ermos unit drafts the same documents inside the practice.
Does the Privacy Act apply to a small dental practice?
Generally yes. A business that provides a health service and holds health information is covered whatever its turnover, and the OAIC lists a dentist as an example of a health service provider.
Does it work with our dental practice software?
The unit works over the documents, templates and exports your practice already produces, and drafts are filed through your existing software. Integration details are covered in scoping.
Does the unit read radiographs or suggest treatment?
No. It drafts and explains from what the dentist has recorded and decided. Diagnosis and treatment planning stay with the dentist.

See Dominion answering from your own documents.

A demonstration takes 30 minutes, uses no client data, and comes with no obligation.

Book a demo
Keep reading
On-premise vs cloud AI What on-premise AI costs The Dominion AI unit How ErmosIQ learns your practice