Overjet, a startup and Harvard i-lab member that uses AI to analyze dental clinical data, has raised $7.85 million in a seed round.
The round was led by Crosslink Capital, with participation from the MIT Media Lab's E14 Fund, Liquid 2 Ventures and SpringRock Ventures.
Overjet's purported mission is to help insurance companies and dental health providers improve patient care and spend less money through automation. The startup's AI technology analyzes a patient's dental information to automatically approve or deny insurance claims, which CEO and co-founder Wardah Inam says should streamline the dental insurance process.
"Say you go to the dentist," Inam said. "The dentist will take your diagnostic information and say you need a crown. They can either send the crown for pre-approval, or do the crown, then send the claim to get reimbursed. In both cases, what happens on the insurance side is there's a team of dentists reviewing this data, looking at your X-rays and determining whether the crown is medically necessary."
It is this step, according to Inam, where error has the potential to be introduced. Each of those dentists is simply "eyeballing it"—in this example, looking at X-rays to determine what percentage of the tooth had eroded—to decide whether the patient needs a crown.
Humans aren't great at quantifying such precise information, Inam said, but Overjet's technology is. The AI software can scan the X-rays and get an accurate picture of how much tooth was exposed, necessitating the crown (or not, as the case may be). The software then couples that result with information from a patient's insurance policy. If the claim meets insurance guidelines, Overjet instantly tells a dental office: Yes, the crown is covered.
"It's much cheaper, because humans are not involved, and more accurate, because machines are better at quantifying different areas," Inam said.
Founded in 2018, Overjet is a recurring member of the Harvard i-lab Venture Incubation Program, most recently in the spring 2020 cohort. It currently has about 20 employees and plans to add a few more with the new funding.
Next, Overjet will expand its client base, which Inam said is already formidable.
"We have some of the largest dental insurance companies on board and some of the largest dental groups as well," Inam said. "These are companies that have thousands of dentists working in practices. We’re still at the tip of the iceberg. There's so much more we can do with the technology we’re building."
Overjet's lead investor, Crosslink, should be able to help with some of that expansion. The firm previously invested in Weave, a startup whose software is often used in a dental context.
We first reported on Overjet's seed round in the Beat in April, when the startup disclosed the funding in a securities filing.
