Welcome to
SMILE Health
Welcome to
SMILE Health
SMILE Health asks: How can we provide accessible, equitable, and integrated oral health care?
Does your startup offer solutions that address this challenge?
2022 taught us that we have something to SMILE about!
We are expanding on our success and looking for more innovators
driven to address how oral health plays a role in overall health. CareQuest Innovation Partners, a company focused on validating
and scaling solutions that improve the oral health of all, in partnership with MATTER, the premier health care incubator, and innovation hub, present the second cohort of SMILE Health.
SMILE Health is designed for innovators looking beyond
the walls of traditional clinical settings to provide care options that:
• Expand racial, socioeconomic, and geographical equity and;
• Integrate solutions to better align traditional “medical” treatment
and oral health to improve health outcomes.
In our second year, the program offers startups a unique blend of mentoring, an in-depth curriculum with access to top-tier experts, and most importantly the chance to prove their solution via access to data and clinical validation studies.
2023 Partners
SMILE Health brings together industry-leading organizations
to transform oral health.
A select group of industry-leading organizations partner with CareQuest Innovation for the SMILE Health program, to advance cutting-edge, integrated solutions and transform overall health. Learn how you can participate in the program.
Systemic Health Needs to Be…
Accessible
More than 56 million Americans live without access to a dental professional. When someone doesn’t have proper access to oral health, it is much more difficult to deliver preventive, minimally invasive care, which ultimately increases the cost for patients, providers, and payors.
Equitable
The current state of our oral health system disproportionately impacts traditionally underserved and under-resourced people. Black and Hispanic adults report that they have never been to a dentist at 3x the rate of white adults.
Integrated
Oral health is linked to overall health. Many patients are willing to receive services like vaccine administration, blood pressure checks, or other screenings at their dentist. We should create a pathway where primary care physicians take part in oral health. Furthermore, co-location and expanded services like cancer screenings could help bring about more holistic, patient-centered care.
Benefits of Participation
SMILE Health program participants will:
- Engage with other cutting-edge startups
- Network with peers, investors, and leading influencers
- Gain exposure to the CareQuest Innovation Partners and MATTER communities
- Validate their solution with oral health stakeholders
- Collaborate with and learn from CareQuest Innovation
Partners and their network - Pitch to potential investors, partners, and clients at Stakeholder Day
- Pitch to industry influencers and investors at a public Demo Day
- Receive a six-month MATTER membership
- Receive a non-dilutive $10,000 cash stipend
2023 Cohort
Biolectrics — Cleveland, Ohio
Biolectrics is commercializing OraFlow, a prescription oral care device that uses microcurrent stimulation to treat periodontitis, the sixth most prevalent health condition in the world. OraFlow overcomes barriers of treatment acceptance by providing a painless, cost-effective take-home treatment for patients who would otherwise avoid care.
Grin — New York, New York
Grin is reinventing oral care, for everyone. With Grin’s imaging and remote diagnostic solution, patients are connected to doctors remotely, bringing patient convenience, reduction in overhead and access to responsible care. Grin strives to empower consumers to take control of their own oral health by seeing for the first time what is happening within their mouths and connecting them to accessible resources and diagnostics encouraging preventive care.
Kare Mobile — Louisville, Kentucky
Kare Mobile helps dentists solve for increased productivity and enhanced patient experience. Operating as a mobile dental services organization, Kare Mobile is poised to close the access gap to oral healthcare through their proprietary single operator vans that they manufacture. Their technology division provides an enterprise solution through proprietary software that assists in automating the scheduling process for both mobile and stationary scheduling. Kare Mobile utilizes teledentistry as a tool to better streamline scheduling and increase productivity for the provider and improve outcomes for the patients.
Incisive Technologies — Melbourne, Australia
Incisive Technologies mission is to advance oral healthcare with innovative tools that will accelerate solutions to the global challenge of tooth decay. Incisive has developed BlueCheck, a highly sensitive, easy-to-use, objective measure of early stage caries to support the paradigm of minimally invasive care. Intellectual property protection extends across all the major global jurisdictions, and they expect BlueCheck to disrupt the current standard of care. CareQuest Innovation Partners is an investor in Incisive Technologies.
Lura — Boston, Massachusetts
Wearable blood/interstitial fluid-based monitors disrupted blood-based monitoring from ex vivo (outside the body) lab tests to continual in-body measurements. The same will be true with saliva. Lura Health is leading the way with a first-in-class salivary diagnostic in-mouth wearable for continual health and disease measurements.
Meet Last Year’s Cohort (2022)
SMILE Health Partners
The true success of any innovative solution is its adoption at scale. SMILE Health has brought together leading industry players to validate and scale program solutions. Our Impact and Scale Partners validate solutions to make them market-ready and provide capital and access to their customers.
Impact Partners
Impact Partners contribute:
- The opportunity to test and refine SMILE Health solutions, their business models, and product market fit.
- Real-world problems to solve by designing and steering validation studies with select start-ups.
Resources, access to insights, expertise, and support in a 4- to 6-week validation study. Impact Partners receive:
- Early access to the full pipeline of SMILE Health Solutions.
- The opportunity to select high-quality, relevant solutions to work with.
- Early access to deploy validated solutions.
Impact Partners: Validate solutions by helping test, refine, and fine-tune business models, product concepts, and more.
