1. What is OMSLINKS?

OMSLINKS.com provides oral and maxillofacial surgeons an affordable  practice software application that facilitates practice workflow and creates a standard platform for doctor-to-doctor and doctor-to-patient communication and collaboration. At its core is image records management, the base unit of communication within today’s OMS profession. Around this centerpiece, OMSLINKS has built tools for collaborative planning among all members of a dental team to enhance the overall quality of care.

2. What business need does the product or solution solve?

Based on U.S. Health Care Financing Administration data, over $56 billion was spent on dental services in 1999 and that amount is projected to increase to $83.7 billion by 2005. By the physical nature of stand-alone, individual dental offices, the dental practice industry is highly fragmented. Time consuming image record management, inefficient collaboration with other practitioners, lack of consultation recommendations and follow up with patients, and the lack of tools to educate and facilitate optimal patient treatment, reduces the quality of clinical care, and reduces revenue that might have been generated. OMSLINKS.com addresses these challenges by providing an ASP that creates an affordable, consistent platform for clinical information exchange and a worldwide OMS community via the Internet.

3. What is an ASP?

Application Service Providers (ASP) rent or lease software applications to customers via the Internet for a reoccurring fee. The ASPs will host their application on servers located remote to the customer’s location. This model is designed to dramatically reduce customer cost of software ownership, accelerate access to product enhancements, while simultaneously providing greater functionality then previously possible with legacy based systems. Additionally, the ASP will professionally maintain customer databases, providing greater security, integrity, and redundancy than possible by the individual user.

4. What are the competitive differentiators?

Oral and maxillofacial surgeons have already demonstrated that they welcome tools that assist them in their efforts to communicate treatment plans to patients. OMSLINKS provides a dramatically improved education vehicle for patients to explore treatment plans and image records, appointment scheduling, monitor their financial accounts, and ultimately have appropriate expectations for the course of their treatment.

The OMSLINKS application can be used alone or in conjunction with existing business management software. It can also be coupled with existing clinical applications to significantly enhance their functionality. Key components facilitating increased productivity include: case management collaboration tools, clinical database of patient records, practice management options, patient zone, study club support, and links to important online resources.

By facilitating and streamlining the consultative and collaborative processes inherent to clinical practice, OMSLINKS gives oral and maxillofacial surgeons the ability to deliver a higher quality of clinical care to their patients without increasing their costs or time involved in the practice.

5. What is the history of product development?

Direct effort on OMSLINKS began in 2004 with research into existing Internet platforms for practice management applications. The beta version of OMSLINKS is currently used in Dr. Bolding's practice, where it is used as an add-on feature to business management systems. OMSLINKS enables collaborative web functionality absent in some legacy systems.

6. What are the business benefits for the OMS practices?

OMSLINKS estimates that the average practice will save about $16,000 per year due to savings in areas ranging from doctor labor to web page creation and maintenance. OMSLINKS also creates savings to their customers against the labor and cost to manage an IT system on an ongoing basis. Clients can get immediate ASP access from any location without having to struggle with varying formats of information exchange.

The OMSLINKS solution will increase in value as additional participants join and the collaborative opportunity increases. Because collaboration is the central feature of the OMSLINKS solution, national study club organizations, university affiliations and professional societies are targeted as significant channels of distribution to rapidly increase the network of users.