The fourth year of SMILE Health was the accelerator’s biggest year yet. Over the course of four months, the eight startups in the 2025 SMILE Health cohort worked closely with their mission-aligned industry partners, investors, and the CareQuest Innovation Partners team to advance solutions that strengthen equity, access, and the connection between oral and overall health. This year’s solutions included innovations in pediatric dentistry, AI and virtual health, patient engagement, and more. Reveal Day Highlights Networking, Collaboration that Drives Impact SMILE Health culminated with Reveal Day and HLTH. Read more about SMILE Health at HLTH, where startups joined the Oral Health Pavilion alongside CareQuest Innovation Partners, Henry Schein and PDS Health. Hosted by MATTER in Chicago, Reveal Day allowed the cohort to showcase their solutions to industry partners, investors, and experts from 30+ industry leading organizations. Pitches highlighted SMILE’s emphasis on collaboration, showcasing 19 validation studies completed across the eight startups and 13 industry partners. Findings include:

• Children are receiving their first dental visit at around 25 months, one year later than recommended by the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry, highlighting opportunity for First Grin, which provides pediatric oral care kits and targeted, evidence-based education to help prevent oral disease starting in pregnancy and infancy.
• Social Cascade drove a 600% increase in reach and engagement on social media for a practice serving a highly remote, mostly Medicaid patient population. Social Cascade leverages AI to develop targeted content calendars, helping providers deliver educational messaging to promote better oral health between visits.
• 80% of providers agreed that providing patients with their own EDR data empowers them to take ownership of their own health, and 93% of providers expected interoperability between medical and dental data to become a patient expectation. These findings highlight opportunity for Toothapps, which advances health data access, interoperability, and real-time patient engagement across the medical and dental care continuum.

“Reveal Day is a powerful reminder of what happens when industry leaders, innovators, and our partners unite around a shared purpose,” said Faisal Chaudhry, Senior Manager, Innovation Programs and Services at CareQuest Innovation Partners. “In four short years, our ecosystem has grown because of the incredible contributions of partners and founders who turn bold ideas into real-world impact. Together, we’re driving positive change for innovators, patients, and underserved communities.”

“CareQuest has introduced us to new startups that allow us to reach more people, giving us an opportunity to understand what the needs are across communities and how we can address them with the programs we put together,” said Eric Kirchner, Senior Advisor, Dental Business Intelligence and Integration, Cigna Healthcare.

“SMILE Health aligns perfectly with our mission: putting patients at the center of care, and disrupting outdated systems that hold health care back,” said Bryan Laskin, DDS, co-founder and chief executive officer of Toothapps. “This community of innovators pushes boundaries to solve systemic challenges with bold, meaningful solutions.”

Several SMILE Health startups will continue to collaborate with industry partners on longer-term initiatives via the ACCELERATE program, which enables collaboration between innovators and industry partners to de-risk new solutions, identify shared value, and move efficiently from pilot to scaled commercial partnerships. We’re excited for what’s next in 2026!