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From carefree summers as a child on an Estonian island, Hiiumaa, to leading dental innovation in Brazil, DIO’s Co-Founder and CEO Ra Ringvee’s rise is one of unexpected twists and bold decisions. In this interview, this high-flying Estonian shares how a chance exchange semester turned into a groundbreaking partnership with one of Brazil’s top dental families, leveraging AI to change the field of dentistry. DIO sets a new standard for precision, transparency, and trust in dental care in a country known for its challenges and immense potential.
With a vision to become the “Waze of dentistry,” guiding dental professionals through AI-assisted diagnostic paths, how do you envision your platform shaping the future of dental care, especially regarding treatment accuracy and patient trust?
DIO aims to guide dental professionals through the diagnostic process as efficiently as possible, as Waze guides drivers from point A to point B with the best routes. Our goal is to help dentists steer the diagnostics and treatments in a way that ensures that the patient achieves their desired outcomes with clarity and confidence. This doesn’t imply that dentists don’t know the way—rather, the patients are often unfamiliar with the journey ahead. For dentists, DIO serves as a second opinion, validating and optimising the path from diagnosis to treatment while helping patients better understand their treatment journey.
We enhance diagnostic accuracy and consistency by offering real-time, AI-driven insights, addressing a critical challenge in dental care. Patients gain a clear, visual understanding of their oral health and the rationale behind each treatment recommendation, which builds trust and confidence.
In essence, we envision DIO as a decision-making support tool for diagnostics and treatment planning and a strategic ally for patients and dentists, guiding them along the most optimal path.
Given DIO’s recent awards and recognition, what aspects of your technology or approach led to these accolades, and how do these recognitions align with your long-term goals?
DIO was selected as the premier health tech startup in Brazil by Weill Cornell University (USA) and the University of Sao Paulo (BR) this June at the Precision Health Innovations & Education conference and as the best startup in Brazil in August at the Startup Summit, amongst 3,300 startups across Brazil.
DIO’s recent recognition highlights our commitment to leveraging AI for good, transforming dentists into super dentists, and ensuring accurate diagnostics, optimal treatment planning, and efficient communication of the patient’s treatment needs and plan.
Key factors contributing to this recognition include our robust AI algorithms explicitly tailored for radiographic analysis and our emphasis on usability, which allows dentists to interpret complex images efficiently. Additionally, our unique focus on mapping the entire dental structure from X-rays ensures comprehensive treatment insights, increasing diagnostic accuracy and patient engagement.
We aim to become the go-to platform for accurate, efficient, and patient-friendly diagnostics by continually optimising our AI models and expanding our reach. This recognition is a powerful step toward solidifying our role as innovators in dental health technology and supporting our mission to democratise access to quality dental care. Smiling should not be a privilege.
Our solution is currently used to help approximately 30,000 patients take the first step to restore their smiles monthly.
DIO’s AI-powered platform has been designed to simplify dental diagnoses and treatment planning for professionals and patients. Could you share how this tool improves patient-doctor communication and what feedback you’ve received from patients on this feature?
A patient visiting three different dentists receives three different diagnostics and treatment plans. This inconsistency in dental diagnostics leads to suboptimal and even incorrect dental treatment plans, which resolve the symptoms rather than the root causes and erode trust between patients and dentists.
Studies show that patients are open to AI-supported diagnoses and actively seek them: a recent survey found that 61% of patients are very or extremely receptive to annotated X-rays. Nearly 60% would consider switching providers to access treatment guided by AI-enhanced assessments. Additionally, over 70% of respondents said they would trust a diagnosis more if their dentist used AI for disease detection. The time has come to utilise this technology to bring greater accuracy and trust to dental care.
Our AI-powered platform directly addresses these needs by providing clear, annotated visualisations of dental X-rays. The AI maps the patient’s mouth and highlights areas of concern, enabling patients to understand their oral health better at a glance. This transparency empowers patients to comprehend their diagnosis, recommended treatments, and the reasoning behind each step, fostering trust and confidence in their care plan.
For dentists, DIO’s AI is a powerful support tool. It serves as an objective second set of eyes, ensuring no detail is overlooked while allowing the dentist to exercise professional judgment on the best course of action. By clarifying ambiguous imagery, the AI helps communicate diagnostic findings precisely, enhancing the patient’s sense of security. This blend of human expertise and AI-backed precision creates a collaborative, trustworthy approach to restoring and maintaining patients’ smiles.
As DIO expands, what new features or innovations can users expect from your platform in the coming years, and how do these align with the challenges currently faced by the dental industry?
DIO constantly evolves to meet user needs through AI enhancements and software updates. We’re focused on making our platform more user-friendly, improving the accuracy of our AI models, and expanding the types of exams and radiographic findings we support.
In Brazil, the dental industry is still undergoing a digital transformation, with only half of clinics using clinic management software. Many find the available systems overly complex and lack adequate onboarding support. We are committed to making our platform intuitive and easy to use, with ongoing user experience improvements and AI-driven tools designed to simplify navigation and support.
While our AI models already achieve over 95% accuracy across most radiographic findings, we are committed to continually enhancing their precision and expanding the range of radiographic findings we can detect. In the coming year, one core focus is improving our capabilities to detect rare diseases and tumours, where early diagnosis can be life-saving. We’re working with leading universities in Brazil and abroad to strengthen these capabilities and bring advanced diagnostics to underserved areas with limited specialist access.
We are also partnering with Brazilian government agencies and federal universities to enhance our AI’s compatibility with new exam types, including computerised tomography—known for its complexity—and intraoral 3D scans and photos. This will enable more detailed assessments, particularly for complex cases that require comprehensive analysis. The goal is to integrate diagnostics from various exams to create a complete diagnostic picture and recommend the most precise treatments possible.
Beyond dental clinics, DIO is collaborating with dental insurance companies, including Unimed, one of the world’s largest cooperatives with over 18 million beneficiaries. By supporting insurers in auditing all dental claims, we aim to bring greater efficiency and trust to this sector. Although we’re already active in this space, refining and expanding these solutions will be one of the primary focuses for 2025.
These innovations address significant industry challenges: improving diagnostic consistency, fostering patient trust, reducing insurance fraud, and making advanced tools accessible. Through these efforts, DIO is helping to build a more patient-centred future for dental care.
