May 13, 2025 • 20 mins
You can download your FREE report on how you can avoid financial mistakes as a dentist using the link just here >>> dentistswhoinvest.com/podcastreport
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When a life-threatening diagnosis collided with a background in high finance, Daniel Jones found a mission: bring financial clarity to dental practices. At just 25, he’s now at the forefront of dental fintech with Medfin—a platform built to track the KPIs that actually matter.
In this episode, Daniel shares how most dental software misses the mark on financial reporting, leaving practice owners buried in spreadsheets. Medfin bridges the gap by connecting clinical and financial data to deliver real-time insights into chair utilisation, treatment profitability, associate performance, and more. Think: less admin, better decisions, and healthier profit margins.
We also dive into Daniel’s personal story, his strategic market approach, and how he’s reshaping the future of dental business management with £1.5 million in VC support.
If you’re a practice owner ready to stop guessing and start growing, this conversation is your wake-up call.
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Disclaimer: All content on this channel is for education purposes only and does not constitute an investment recommendation or individual financial advice. For that, you should speak to a regulated, independent professional. The value of investments and the income from them can go down as well as up, so you may get back less than you invest. The views expressed on this channel may no longer be current. The information provided is not a personal recommendation for any particular investment. Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and all tax rules may change in the future. If you are unsure about the suitability of an investment, you should speak to a regulated, independent professional. Investment figures quoted refer to simulated past performance and that past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results/performance.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dr James (00:00):
This episode is a little bit different.
Today.
We're not really talking aboutfinance so much, but we still
are at the same time, becausewe're referring to somebody's
journey, and that lovelysomebody is Mr Daniel Jones,
who's sat in front of me rightnow, and Daniel has a really
interesting tech startup that isdesigned to help dental
practices, which we're going tocome on to talking about in just
a second.
It helps them whenever it comesto their finances, but before
(00:23):
we talk about that, probablynice to just have a little bit
of an intro, wouldn't it, Daniel?
I think that'd be a great placeto begin.
Daniel (00:28):
Indeed, thank you very much for having me on the
podcast, James.
It's lovely to be here.
In terms of my background, so Iactually started my career in
finance for a couple of yearsdoing a mixture of mergers and
acquisitions and leveragefinance, which was a great
(00:48):
grounding in the world offinance.
Well, it was well paid also.
But it's not what I wanted todo for the rest of my life.
Candidly, I was thinking ofgoing into private equity and I
wanted to do something a bitmore creative where I felt like
I could build something, and I'dalways been very
entrepreneurial.
So I actually went to work workin a startup.
So I went from some 16,000person international
organization to a startup whereI was the third hire and walking
(01:11):
in this boxes, uh, all over theplace and my computer wasn't
set up properly, um, first day.
But I was there for two years.
Um, it was, I'd say, the mostformative experience of my
career because in that time Ilearned how to build a startup
from the ground up.
I worked with fantasticfounders.
We built that business in thespace of two years to over a
million and a half in revenueand we raised over a half
(01:33):
million dollars in seed funding.
But it was fantastic and thatled me on to what I'm doing now
with Medfin.
I'm the co-founder and CEO.
I'm perhaps going to talk a bitmore about that in a minute and
why I got interested in themedical space and dentistry in
general.
Dr James (01:48):
Sure sounds fun, Medfin.
Have I got that right?
Or is there an I in there?
Med-e-f-i-n.
Medfin.
M-e-d-f-i-n.
Medfin.
I just wanted to make sure Inailed that one.
But yeah, no story.
Uh, quite the quite.
The journey to uh thenobviously become associated with
(02:09):
the dental industry with time.
And just for context, Daniel,you are 25 years of age.
I've got that right, haven't I?
Daniel (02:13):
I am.
Dr James (02:13):
I am 25, yeah, 26 in August, though so getting
getting older, 25 and threequarters, something like that,
something like that.
Anyway, back to what we weresaying.
I mean, it's an interesting onebecause obviously you saw an
opportunity to help dentists.
That's how a business works.
It helps make our life easier,it fixes a problem.
I suppose you could say so.
(02:35):
How did that come about?
As in, how did you catch windof the struggles that dentists
have?
Daniel (02:47):
have.
Yeah, it's a.
It's a great question andactually my my interest came
through being interested inhealthcare more generally.
So I was in my final year ofuniversity at Cambridge and I
got diagnosed, sort of out ofthe blue, with a really severe
heart condition.
Um, co-optation aorta wascaught very late in my life.
Typically it's detected farearlier but missed multiple
times when I was growing up.
Um, and I had to havecorrective surgery for that and
(03:08):
the process for getting thatsorted.
You know, I was six months outfrom final final exams.
I didn't bounce around the nhsfor what felt like almost I
think it was almost two years.
Um, I was originally safe tohave open heart surgery.
I got some private advice toget back to the NHS, managed to
get slightly less life-changingsurgery, but I came out the
(03:29):
other side.
You know, frankly it was areally poor experience.
It was a really tough time andI came out the other side
thinking I'd love to apply myskill set and what I know and
the things that I'm good at tocontribute into helping
healthcare as a whole.
So that's what got meinterested in healthcare.
And then as for dentistry, so Iwas sort of looking at the
(03:49):
different verticals withinhealthcare and trying to work
out where to start.
Where would be an interestingplace to start, and I think one
of the reasons why we settled onmy co-founder, matt, and I
settled on dentistry was becauseof dentists.
We found them to be some of thesharpest people in the
healthcare industry, some of themost commercial, and when
(04:11):
you're building software, likewe are, that focuses on the
commercial side of healthcareand the financial management of
practices, it made sense tostart somewhere where people are
already really thinking aboutthat and they value that, and
for us, especially in the ukhealthcare landscape, the place
that that made sense to startwas in dentistry.
Um, my godmother works in thedental profession, so I've
(04:32):
spoken to her about stuff, and Ialso had a few friends that
were involved either indentistry as associate dentists
or in other dental startups, soI was able to lean on them early
in our journey.
Um, and that's yeah, that'sreally why, why we started and
it's been it's been fantasticworking with, with so many
dentists up and down the countryso far interesting and you know
(04:53):
what?
Dr James (04:53):
I've had similar conversations with accountants
who service multiple health caredisciplines.
So let's say pharmacists, let'ssay gmps, let's say pharmacists
, let's say GMPs, let's say,well, yeah, the GMPs pharmacists
, dentists would be the mainones that spring to mind and
they say they always say James,relatively speaking, even though
dentists, they have got roomfor improvement.
(05:15):
I think it's definitely true tosay they tend to be a little
bit more commercially minded,effectively, versus the other
professions, healthcareprofessions.
You know, rightly or wrongly,we're not here to debate that
today.
We're just making anobservation, but I think it
comes with the territory becausethey obviously they have to run
dental practice and they needto think about the numbers to
(05:37):
some level.
So you identified this mindsetthat dentists possess, this
commonality that they share, andthen you thought to yourself
right, how can I use?
What an interesting way to goabout starting a business.
You were like.
You almost thought to yourselfokay, where, where are the
people receptive to my help?
And then let me build somethingto help them using the skill
(05:57):
set that I have.
Have I got that right?
Was it in that order?
Daniel (06:00):
yeah, I think that's um, I think that's a good way of
putting it.
I think, in order to createpositive impact and help people,
you need to be doing it in theright place and with with people
.
As you say, they're receptiveto that, and one of the things
that I've loved working withdentists so far is how
entrepreneurial many are, youknow.
Even so, yeah, the principaldentists often very
(06:21):
entrepreneurial, quite forwardthinking, but even associate
dentists, because you'reessentially the model of how it
works.
I think it attractsentrepreneurial people and, as
an entrepreneur, I love workingwith other entrepreneurial
people boom, there we go.
Dr James (06:37):
So those two parts, those, those two parts fitted
together.
And then what happened next?
As in, you thought to yourselfright, my skill set is finance
and I also have a softwareengineering background.
What do dentists need help with?
And then what happened next?
Daniel (06:58):
yeah, exactly so.
I think across the whole ofhealthcare, not just dentistry.
One really big problem is thattoday the financial data and the
clinical data are verydisconnected.
So what do I mean by this?
The data that sits in yourpractice management system.
It's quite hard to link that toyour financial data and your
practice performance and inorder for practice owners to
(07:21):
perhaps monitor how theirbusiness is doing, to visualize
easily key KPIs, how thebusiness is performing, it's
often quite laborious forpractices.
Data sits in all differentplaces and you'll have to do
crunching numbers in Excel,taking numbers out manually from
different places, and we don'tthink that should be the case
(07:41):
and we think that actuallyhealthcare providers and dentist
practices can do better whenthey're armed with the data that
they need to make gooddecisions about their practice
and where to go in the future.
So an example of this I wouldgive is to get good KPIs from
your practice management system,let's say, associate
(08:03):
profitability, and it's oftenquite difficult to do that to
get a really good, accuratepicture a good, accurate picture
of your sort of cash flow, whatyou're making the most money on
, sort of your margins ondifferent service lines In other
industries.
Today you have fantasticsoftware that tells you these
things.
So there's companies out therelike Pigment or Anaplan these
(08:27):
huge companies that do greatbusiness planning software In
healthcare.
You don't get any of this.
Pigment or Anaplan these hugecompanies that do great business
planning software In healthcareyou don't get any of this.
And we think you know it's mythesis that dentists and
healthcare professionals deservegreat software to help them run
their practices.
Dr James (08:42):
And if you think about it I mean you saying that out
loud it's kind of like a duality.
It kind of conjures thisduality of energies in me.
Part of me is like, wow, yeah,of course they do.
That would be amazing.
But the second part of me islike I can't believe we're
shooting this in 2025 and no onehas got round to this yet.
It's nuts, and you are correct.
(09:02):
You think about the, becauseyou're basically talking about
practice management software andwe're not going to name names
today, but there is oneavant-garde one on the market,
shall we say, that offers afully more integrated patient
management software plusfinancial management solutions
and KPIs.
Daniel (09:22):
But beyond that, I mean that particular company, to my
knowledge, is like 2% of themarket, and the and the other 98
, well, that's where you come inindeed, um, and I think it's
not just in the uk, it's world,worldwide with dental practices,
that you have this and actually, to be fair to existing
practice management, uhsoftwares, they do the clinical
(09:45):
side typically very well.
Um, depending on the provider,they've got a lot of
functionality when it comes tothe clinical side and the
software that's required toserve that.
But where, in my view, throughresearch and through speaking to
a lot of dentists, where itfalls down is on, like the
financial reporting aspect andequipping practices with with
the data and metrics that theyneed to perform really well
(10:05):
financially as well as, at thesame time as uh, delighting
patients can we get a littlemore granular on the specific
functionality, saying as much asyou can say off your software
solution?
Dr James (10:19):
I'd be interested to know or how dentists benefit of
course.
Daniel (10:22):
so at medfin we're we're broadly working on two sort of
different different products,products that connect in with
one another.
That's what's on our roadmap,so I'll take those sequentially.
The first is actually what Iwould call a next generation
plan product.
So, James, I'm sure you'll befamiliar with the plan providers
(10:44):
out there in the market todayAgain, I won't say names, but
that allow practices to providemembership plans to their
patients.
Now, a lot of practice ownersthat I've spoken to love the
fact that they can have thislike guaranteed income.
It brings peace of mindpatients, like spreading the
cost over um over over a periodof time, as opposed to paying up
(11:08):
front.
I think it's also verybeneficial from the patient
perspective because it's like apreventative plan.
But I think today theinfrastructure for those plans
is very, very expensive.
So direct debit is one of thecheapest forms of payment and
what dentists pay to plan forthe stay is very expensive.
We think we could do that a lotmore cheaply and we also built a
(11:29):
software system around plans toallow us to reduce a lot of the
manual work when it comes toplan administration.
So I'll give you a couple ofconcrete examples.
The first is dentists that I'vespoken to often spend quite a
bit of time calculating how muchto pay their associate dentists
and hygienists specifically forplanned patients.
(11:50):
Our software does thisautomatically and will send you
a sort of costed breakdown as apractice owner every month to
help you with that in a morecrunching number of spreadsheets
, and it also connects directlyinto your practice management
software.
So when someone stops payingfor example, let's say a direct
debit fails that's automaticallyupdated on the practice
(12:12):
management system, which helpsget around things like.
I spoke with a practice inSurrey the other day and they
had a very lucky man who hadstopped paying for his plan
seven years ago but it hadn'tbeen updated on practice
management software because itdoesn't connect in with anything
.
Dr James (12:27):
I'm smiling because I've heard similar stories.
Yeah, that actually happens.
How crazy is that.
But anyway.
Daniel (12:33):
Exactly.
He didn't say anything becausehe's getting a great deal out of
it and they noticed seven yearslater, and so the connection in
with the practice managementsoftware is essential.
We built a lot of software andspecific workflows around that,
so it's essentially like techenabled.
A is what I would callfinancial planning in a NASA
(12:58):
software, where we're able tovisualize cash flow to revenue
costs in a really granular wayfor practices in real time.
We connect them with cloudaccounting software and with
open banking, and also wecalculate a lot of key KPIs in
real time.
We surface this as a softwarethat's really easy to use.
(13:19):
At the moment, we're not doingforecasting, but in the future,
where we want to get to my teamand I we have experience with AI
and machine learning We'd liketo be able to do great
forecasting for practices reallysimply, really easily, whereas
today that would have to be donevery manually.
So you can think of it broadlyas a big suite of financial
software, and we want to bringall the financial information
(13:46):
from a practice onto oneplatform.
Dr James (13:47):
That platform will be medfin and you can do a lot of
interesting things with that.
Can I ask a question?
It's a little off piste but itis somewhat related.
In your opinion, what do youthink the biggest kpis are the
dental practices should bemonitoring?
And I get, I get that that's.
I'm putting you on thespotlight there a little bit.
It doesn't have to be our top10 in sequential order, but
maybe just some of the big onesthat spring to mind yeah, I
think, uh, chair utilizationrate is a really important one.
Daniel (14:10):
I think you want to be able to see revenue and
profitability by associatedentists.
Um, I think you want to be ableto see the marginal
profitability of a differenttreatment type.
So you want a really goodunderstanding of, like how much
money as a practice you make ondifferent treatments.
So you want to have a goodunderstanding of, okay, if I do
this sort of crown, I make thismuch money profit if I do, um,
(14:35):
if I do invisalign, this is howmuch I'm making, and a lot of
practices they don't have thisreally granular data, and so I
think it's important tounderstand the treatment mix and
how that affects the practicetoo.
Another thing and I would saythis because we're doing a plan
product but one thing that Irealized when I started looking
into the plan space is thatactually a lot of practices they
(14:56):
know how much revenue they'remaking on their plans, but often
they won't have a really goodidea of what the proper
profitability of those plans are, because in order to calculate
the profitability of a plan, youneed to know how much of the
entitlements the patients areusing.
So how many of those hygieneappointments and examinations
are they using that they'reentitled to and also the
(15:18):
discounts that's being givenaway as part of that plan,
because in a lot of plans youhave like a 10 or 15% discount,
but today they don't have thatdata and pull it together you
just know what your sort ofrevenue is, but actually how
much money a practice is makingafter those calculations.
So our software calculates thattoo, which is, from what I
understand, fairly novel.
Dr James (15:40):
I really wanted to ask that question to you.
It just popped into my headwhen we were speaking there
because, as the, the kpi man andyou know is, is, is one, uh, I
suppose, way of looking at whatyou do, you've got to know which
ones, how they rank in terms oftheir hierarchy.
I thought that would be areally cool question to ask.
You know what it is.
It is interesting because thereis actually uh and again, I
(16:02):
won't name names there isactually a solution on the
market and there's, there's anaccountant that I know of who
helps people with this sort ofstuff.
Uh, it goes to, uh, quite agood level of detail on certain
things.
Maybe yours might outrank it oncertain areas.
I don't know, we'd have to getinto the specifics, but the way
(16:22):
it's done is he has all theseelaborate spreadsheets and you
have to get a staff member totype the spreadsheets in at the
end of the day, you know.
So it's not.
How can I say this?
It's not automated.
You know, uh, where, but itsounds like what you do is
similarish, perhaps in moredetail in certain areas.
However, it's all automatedbecause it's handled through
software and again, it justbrings me full circle and it
just makes me think to myself in2025, all the crazy things and
(16:46):
solutions that we have in termsof software, how has no one got
around to this?
Daniel (16:53):
Yeah, I think it's a very good question.
I think part of it is becausethe data work on the backend is
quite complicated like to pullin all this data, to get
integrations, to do the analysis.
It's not like a simple thing todo, so perhaps that's a blocker
, but yeah it's.
I I know there are several sortof like consultants and
(17:14):
business planning agencies outthere that do a lot of great
work with dentists and I thinkthat for us it's not necessarily
that we'd be looking to replacethose guys.
Um, we're not consultants, webuild the software and we want
to put the data and have thatdata visible for dentists and
then, if they want to alsoengage um consultants that have
done it before, you know,increased probability in
(17:35):
practices all the better,because they would then be able
to come in and see metricsstraight away, see the
performance in real time.
So it really is actually wouldmake that process easier as
opposed to sort of getting ridof it altogether.
Dr James (17:49):
Sure, oh, I see it.
Yeah, just to clarify.
I see that as a synergy.
I find it interesting more fromthe perspective of different
approaches, really.
I find it interesting more fromthe perspective of different
approaches really.
And you know, it seems likesuch an obvious thing to
automate that a solution likeyours might be useful.
Tell me this what happens now?
Where do we go from here?
What's next on the horizon fromMedfin?
Daniel (18:12):
Where are you guys presently at with the product?
Yeah, so it's a good question.
We are onboarding our firstpractices.
Now terms of in terms of wherewe are today.
Um, one thing I didn't mention,actually.
So we're vc backed.
We're backed by venture capitalinvestors uh, we raised one and
a half million pounds back innovember from some leading
(18:32):
investors here in london.
We're also backed by thebritish business bank, which is,
which is nice, um, and over thelast few months, we've been
building our software, doingresearch with dentists, asking
people lots of questions.
If you've received a LinkedInuh message from me on uh on
online and you're a dentistlistening to this, I'm sorry.
I've been trying to speak to asmany people as possible to get
(18:56):
feedback no need to apologize.
Dr James (18:58):
Listen, that's a good thing.
Hey, if you've got somethinggood and you can help people,
it's your duty to go and speakto people.
That's how I frame that stuffto me, so I think it's a good
thing I appreciate that, James.
Daniel (19:08):
yeah, so we've been trying to speak to as many
people as possible and now overthe next sort of six months,
especially towards the end ofthe year, our focus is really
sort of working with um,forward-thinking dentists that
want to take control of theirpractice finances, save money
and to work with a I won'tshould go to.
We're a startup, we're basedout of London, we're growing
(19:31):
quickly, but we're anearly-stage company People that
want to be involved in buildingthe future and we're looking to
significantly ramp up the numberof practices we're working with
over the next few months.
We're looking for practicesthat are using dentistry as the
practice management software,typically that between sort of
one, between one and tenpractices and based yeah, based
(19:51):
based in the UK.
So that's, that's the.
That's the overarching plan.
I appreciate it's quite vague,but, yeah, the main thing is
just ramping up, testing andhopefully continuing to build a
product that dentists love andget a lot of benefit out.
This episode is a little bit different.
Today.
We're not really talking aboutfinance so much, but we still
are at the same time, becausewe're referring to somebody's
journey, and that lovelysomebody is Mr Daniel Jones,
who's sat in front of me rightnow, and Daniel has a really
interesting tech startup that isdesigned to help dental
practices, which we're going tocome on to talking about in just
a second.
It helps them whenever it comesto their finances, but before
(00:23):
we talk about that, probablynice to just have a little bit
of an intro, wouldn't it, Daniel?
I think that'd be a great placeto begin.
Daniel (00:28):
Indeed, thank you very much for having me on the
podcast, James.
It's lovely to be here.
In terms of my background, so Iactually started my career in
finance for a couple of yearsdoing a mixture of mergers and
acquisitions and leveragefinance, which was a great
(00:48):
grounding in the world offinance.
Well, it was well paid also.
But it's not what I wanted todo for the rest of my life.
Candidly, I was thinking ofgoing into private equity and I
wanted to do something a bitmore creative where I felt like
I could build something, and I'dalways been very
entrepreneurial.
So I actually went to work workin a startup.
So I went from some 16,000person international
organization to a startup whereI was the third hire and walking
(01:11):
in this boxes, uh, all over theplace and my computer wasn't
set up properly, um, first day.
But I was there for two years.
Um, it was, I'd say, the mostformative experience of my
career because in that time Ilearned how to build a startup
from the ground up.
I worked with fantasticfounders.
We built that business in thespace of two years to over a
million and a half in revenueand we raised over a half
(01:33):
million dollars in seed funding.
But it was fantastic and thatled me on to what I'm doing now
with Medfin.
I'm the co-founder and CEO.
I'm perhaps going to talk a bitmore about that in a minute and
why I got interested in themedical space and dentistry in
general.
Dr James (01:48):
Sure sounds fun, Medfin.
Have I got that right?
Or is there an I in there?
Med-e-f-i-n.
Medfin.
M-e-d-f-i-n.
Medfin.
I just wanted to make sure Inailed that one.
But yeah, no story.
Uh, quite the quite.
The journey to uh thenobviously become associated with
(02:09):
the dental industry with time.
And just for context, Daniel,you are 25 years of age.
I've got that right, haven't I?
Daniel (02:13):
I am.
Dr James (02:13):
I am 25, yeah, 26 in August, though so getting
getting older, 25 and threequarters, something like that,
something like that.
Anyway, back to what we weresaying.
I mean, it's an interesting onebecause obviously you saw an
opportunity to help dentists.
That's how a business works.
It helps make our life easier,it fixes a problem.
I suppose you could say so.
(02:35):
How did that come about?
As in, how did you catch windof the struggles that dentists
have?
Daniel (02:47):
have.
Yeah, it's a.
It's a great question andactually my my interest came
through being interested inhealthcare more generally.
So I was in my final year ofuniversity at Cambridge and I
got diagnosed, sort of out ofthe blue, with a really severe
heart condition.
Um, co-optation aorta wascaught very late in my life.
Typically it's detected farearlier but missed multiple
times when I was growing up.
Um, and I had to havecorrective surgery for that and
(03:08):
the process for getting thatsorted.
You know, I was six months outfrom final final exams.
I didn't bounce around the nhsfor what felt like almost I
think it was almost two years.
Um, I was originally safe tohave open heart surgery.
I got some private advice toget back to the NHS, managed to
get slightly less life-changingsurgery, but I came out the
(03:29):
other side.
You know, frankly it was areally poor experience.
It was a really tough time andI came out the other side
thinking I'd love to apply myskill set and what I know and
the things that I'm good at tocontribute into helping
healthcare as a whole.
So that's what got meinterested in healthcare.
And then as for dentistry, so Iwas sort of looking at the
(03:49):
different verticals withinhealthcare and trying to work
out where to start.
Where would be an interestingplace to start, and I think one
of the reasons why we settled onmy co-founder, matt, and I
settled on dentistry was becauseof dentists.
We found them to be some of thesharpest people in the
healthcare industry, some of themost commercial, and when
(04:11):
you're building software, likewe are, that focuses on the
commercial side of healthcareand the financial management of
practices, it made sense tostart somewhere where people are
already really thinking aboutthat and they value that, and
for us, especially in the ukhealthcare landscape, the place
that that made sense to startwas in dentistry.
Um, my godmother works in thedental profession, so I've
(04:32):
spoken to her about stuff, and Ialso had a few friends that
were involved either indentistry as associate dentists
or in other dental startups, soI was able to lean on them early
in our journey.
Um, and that's yeah, that'sreally why, why we started and
it's been it's been fantasticworking with, with so many
dentists up and down the countryso far interesting and you know
(04:53):
what?
Dr James (04:53):
I've had similar conversations with accountants
who service multiple health caredisciplines.
So let's say pharmacists, let'ssay gmps, let's say pharmacists
, let's say GMPs, let's say,well, yeah, the GMPs pharmacists
, dentists would be the mainones that spring to mind and
they say they always say James,relatively speaking, even though
dentists, they have got roomfor improvement.
(05:15):
I think it's definitely true tosay they tend to be a little
bit more commercially minded,effectively, versus the other
professions, healthcareprofessions.
You know, rightly or wrongly,we're not here to debate that
today.
We're just making anobservation, but I think it
comes with the territory becausethey obviously they have to run
dental practice and they needto think about the numbers to
(05:37):
some level.
So you identified this mindsetthat dentists possess, this
commonality that they share, andthen you thought to yourself
right, how can I use?
What an interesting way to goabout starting a business.
You were like.
You almost thought to yourselfokay, where, where are the
people receptive to my help?
And then let me build somethingto help them using the skill
(05:57):
set that I have.
Have I got that right?
Was it in that order?
Daniel (06:00):
yeah, I think that's um, I think that's a good way of
putting it.
I think, in order to createpositive impact and help people,
you need to be doing it in theright place and with with people
.
As you say, they're receptiveto that, and one of the things
that I've loved working withdentists so far is how
entrepreneurial many are, youknow.
Even so, yeah, the principaldentists often very
(06:21):
entrepreneurial, quite forwardthinking, but even associate
dentists, because you'reessentially the model of how it
works.
I think it attractsentrepreneurial people and, as
an entrepreneur, I love workingwith other entrepreneurial
people boom, there we go.
Dr James (06:37):
So those two parts, those, those two parts fitted
together.
And then what happened next?
As in, you thought to yourselfright, my skill set is finance
and I also have a softwareengineering background.
What do dentists need help with?
And then what happened next?
Daniel (06:58):
yeah, exactly so.
I think across the whole ofhealthcare, not just dentistry.
One really big problem is thattoday the financial data and the
clinical data are verydisconnected.
So what do I mean by this?
The data that sits in yourpractice management system.
It's quite hard to link that toyour financial data and your
practice performance and inorder for practice owners to
(07:21):
perhaps monitor how theirbusiness is doing, to visualize
easily key KPIs, how thebusiness is performing, it's
often quite laborious forpractices.
Data sits in all differentplaces and you'll have to do
crunching numbers in Excel,taking numbers out manually from
different places, and we don'tthink that should be the case
(07:41):
and we think that actuallyhealthcare providers and dentist
practices can do better whenthey're armed with the data that
they need to make gooddecisions about their practice
and where to go in the future.
So an example of this I wouldgive is to get good KPIs from
your practice management system,let's say, associate
(08:03):
profitability, and it's oftenquite difficult to do that to
get a really good, accuratepicture a good, accurate picture
of your sort of cash flow, whatyou're making the most money on
, sort of your margins ondifferent service lines In other
industries.
Today you have fantasticsoftware that tells you these
things.
So there's companies out therelike Pigment or Anaplan these
(08:27):
huge companies that do greatbusiness planning software In
healthcare.
You don't get any of this.
Pigment or Anaplan these hugecompanies that do great business
planning software In healthcareyou don't get any of this.
And we think you know it's mythesis that dentists and
healthcare professionals deservegreat software to help them run
their practices.
Dr James (08:42):
And if you think about it I mean you saying that out
loud it's kind of like a duality.
It kind of conjures thisduality of energies in me.
Part of me is like, wow, yeah,of course they do.
That would be amazing.
But the second part of me islike I can't believe we're
shooting this in 2025 and no onehas got round to this yet.
It's nuts, and you are correct.
(09:02):
You think about the, becauseyou're basically talking about
practice management software andwe're not going to name names
today, but there is oneavant-garde one on the market,
shall we say, that offers afully more integrated patient
management software plusfinancial management solutions
and KPIs.
Daniel (09:22):
But beyond that, I mean that particular company, to my
knowledge, is like 2% of themarket, and the and the other 98
, well, that's where you come inindeed, um, and I think it's
not just in the uk, it's world,worldwide with dental practices,
that you have this and actually, to be fair to existing
practice management, uhsoftwares, they do the clinical
(09:45):
side typically very well.
Um, depending on the provider,they've got a lot of
functionality when it comes tothe clinical side and the
software that's required toserve that.
But where, in my view, throughresearch and through speaking to
a lot of dentists, where itfalls down is on, like the
financial reporting aspect andequipping practices with with
the data and metrics that theyneed to perform really well
(10:05):
financially as well as, at thesame time as uh, delighting
patients can we get a littlemore granular on the specific
functionality, saying as much asyou can say off your software
solution?
Dr James (10:19):
I'd be interested to know or how dentists benefit of
course.
Daniel (10:22):
so at medfin we're we're broadly working on two sort of
different different products,products that connect in with
one another.
That's what's on our roadmap,so I'll take those sequentially.
The first is actually what Iwould call a next generation
plan product.
So, James, I'm sure you'll befamiliar with the plan providers
(10:44):
out there in the market todayAgain, I won't say names, but
that allow practices to providemembership plans to their
patients.
Now, a lot of practice ownersthat I've spoken to love the
fact that they can have thislike guaranteed income.
It brings peace of mindpatients, like spreading the
cost over um over over a periodof time, as opposed to paying up
(11:08):
front.
I think it's also verybeneficial from the patient
perspective because it's like apreventative plan.
But I think today theinfrastructure for those plans
is very, very expensive.
So direct debit is one of thecheapest forms of payment and
what dentists pay to plan forthe stay is very expensive.
We think we could do that a lotmore cheaply and we also built a
(11:29):
software system around plans toallow us to reduce a lot of the
manual work when it comes toplan administration.
So I'll give you a couple ofconcrete examples.
The first is dentists that I'vespoken to often spend quite a
bit of time calculating how muchto pay their associate dentists
and hygienists specifically forplanned patients.
(11:50):
Our software does thisautomatically and will send you
a sort of costed breakdown as apractice owner every month to
help you with that in a morecrunching number of spreadsheets
, and it also connects directlyinto your practice management
software.
So when someone stops payingfor example, let's say a direct
debit fails that's automaticallyupdated on the practice
(12:12):
management system, which helpsget around things like.
I spoke with a practice inSurrey the other day and they
had a very lucky man who hadstopped paying for his plan
seven years ago but it hadn'tbeen updated on practice
management software because itdoesn't connect in with anything
.
Dr James (12:27):
I'm smiling because I've heard similar stories.
Yeah, that actually happens.
How crazy is that.
But anyway.
Daniel (12:33):
Exactly.
He didn't say anything becausehe's getting a great deal out of
it and they noticed seven yearslater, and so the connection in
with the practice managementsoftware is essential.
We built a lot of software andspecific workflows around that,
so it's essentially like techenabled.
A is what I would callfinancial planning in a NASA
(12:58):
software, where we're able tovisualize cash flow to revenue
costs in a really granular wayfor practices in real time.
We connect them with cloudaccounting software and with
open banking, and also wecalculate a lot of key KPIs in
real time.
We surface this as a softwarethat's really easy to use.
(13:19):
At the moment, we're not doingforecasting, but in the future,
where we want to get to my teamand I we have experience with AI
and machine learning We'd liketo be able to do great
forecasting for practices reallysimply, really easily, whereas
today that would have to be donevery manually.
So you can think of it broadlyas a big suite of financial
software, and we want to bringall the financial information
(13:46):
from a practice onto oneplatform.
Dr James (13:47):
That platform will be medfin and you can do a lot of
interesting things with that.
Can I ask a question?
It's a little off piste but itis somewhat related.
In your opinion, what do youthink the biggest kpis are the
dental practices should bemonitoring?
And I get, I get that that's.
I'm putting you on thespotlight there a little bit.
It doesn't have to be our top10 in sequential order, but
maybe just some of the big onesthat spring to mind yeah, I
think, uh, chair utilizationrate is a really important one.
Daniel (14:10):
I think you want to be able to see revenue and
profitability by associatedentists.
Um, I think you want to be ableto see the marginal
profitability of a differenttreatment type.
So you want a really goodunderstanding of, like how much
money as a practice you make ondifferent treatments.
So you want to have a goodunderstanding of, okay, if I do
this sort of crown, I make thismuch money profit if I do, um,
(14:35):
if I do invisalign, this is howmuch I'm making, and a lot of
practices they don't have thisreally granular data, and so I
think it's important tounderstand the treatment mix and
how that affects the practicetoo.
Another thing and I would saythis because we're doing a plan
product but one thing that Irealized when I started looking
into the plan space is thatactually a lot of practices they
(14:56):
know how much revenue they'remaking on their plans, but often
they won't have a really goodidea of what the proper
profitability of those plans are, because in order to calculate
the profitability of a plan, youneed to know how much of the
entitlements the patients areusing.
So how many of those hygieneappointments and examinations
are they using that they'reentitled to and also the
(15:18):
discounts that's being givenaway as part of that plan,
because in a lot of plans youhave like a 10 or 15% discount,
but today they don't have thatdata and pull it together you
just know what your sort ofrevenue is, but actually how
much money a practice is makingafter those calculations.
So our software calculates thattoo, which is, from what I
understand, fairly novel.
Dr James (15:40):
I really wanted to ask that question to you.
It just popped into my headwhen we were speaking there
because, as the, the kpi man andyou know is, is, is one, uh, I
suppose, way of looking at whatyou do, you've got to know which
ones, how they rank in terms oftheir hierarchy.
I thought that would be areally cool question to ask.
You know what it is.
It is interesting because thereis actually uh and again, I
(16:02):
won't name names there isactually a solution on the
market and there's, there's anaccountant that I know of who
helps people with this sort ofstuff.
Uh, it goes to, uh, quite agood level of detail on certain
things.
Maybe yours might outrank it oncertain areas.
I don't know, we'd have to getinto the specifics, but the way
(16:22):
it's done is he has all theseelaborate spreadsheets and you
have to get a staff member totype the spreadsheets in at the
end of the day, you know.
So it's not.
How can I say this?
It's not automated.
You know, uh, where, but itsounds like what you do is
similarish, perhaps in moredetail in certain areas.
However, it's all automatedbecause it's handled through
software and again, it justbrings me full circle and it
just makes me think to myself in2025, all the crazy things and
(16:46):
solutions that we have in termsof software, how has no one got
around to this?
Daniel (16:53):
Yeah, I think it's a very good question.
I think part of it is becausethe data work on the backend is
quite complicated like to pullin all this data, to get
integrations, to do the analysis.
It's not like a simple thing todo, so perhaps that's a blocker
, but yeah it's.
I I know there are several sortof like consultants and
(17:14):
business planning agencies outthere that do a lot of great
work with dentists and I thinkthat for us it's not necessarily
that we'd be looking to replacethose guys.
Um, we're not consultants, webuild the software and we want
to put the data and have thatdata visible for dentists and
then, if they want to alsoengage um consultants that have
done it before, you know,increased probability in
(17:35):
practices all the better,because they would then be able
to come in and see metricsstraight away, see the
performance in real time.
So it really is actually wouldmake that process easier as
opposed to sort of getting ridof it altogether.
Dr James (17:49):
Sure, oh, I see it.
Yeah, just to clarify.
I see that as a synergy.
I find it interesting more fromthe perspective of different
approaches, really.
I find it interesting more fromthe perspective of different
approaches really.
And you know, it seems likesuch an obvious thing to
automate that a solution likeyours might be useful.
Tell me this what happens now?
Where do we go from here?
What's next on the horizon fromMedfin?
Daniel (18:12):
Where are you guys presently at with the product?
Yeah, so it's a good question.
We are onboarding our firstpractices.
Now terms of in terms of wherewe are today.
Um, one thing I didn't mention,actually.
So we're vc backed.
We're backed by venture capitalinvestors uh, we raised one and
a half million pounds back innovember from some leading
(18:32):
investors here in london.
We're also backed by thebritish business bank, which is,
which is nice, um, and over thelast few months, we've been
building our software, doingresearch with dentists, asking
people lots of questions.
If you've received a LinkedInuh message from me on uh on
online and you're a dentistlistening to this, I'm sorry.
I've been trying to speak to asmany people as possible to get
(18:56):
feedback no need to apologize.
Dr James (18:58):
Listen, that's a good thing.
Hey, if you've got somethinggood and you can help people,
it's your duty to go and speakto people.
That's how I frame that stuffto me, so I think it's a good
thing I appreciate that, James.
Daniel (19:08):
yeah, so we've been trying to speak to as many
people as possible and now overthe next sort of six months,
especially towards the end ofthe year, our focus is really
sort of working with um,forward-thinking dentists that
want to take control of theirpractice finances, save money
and to work with a I won'tshould go to.
We're a startup, we're basedout of London, we're growing
(19:31):
quickly, but we're anearly-stage company People that
want to be involved in buildingthe future and we're looking to
significantly ramp up the numberof practices we're working with
over the next few months.
We're looking for practicesthat are using dentistry as the
practice management software,typically that between sort of
one, between one and tenpractices and based yeah, based
(19:51):
based in the UK.
So that's, that's the.
That's the overarching plan.
I appreciate it's quite vague,but, yeah, the main thing is
just ramping up, testing andhopefully continuing to build a
product that dentists love andget a lot of benefit out.
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