Monetizing a dental network would actually be surprisingly easy...you charge dentists for new patient appointments. With the average lifetime patient value being over $1k, charging $20-$50 per appointment will get a lot of traction among dentists. Additionally, using the data in dental management systems to help automate the operational aspects of a dentist's practice is something that dentists are more than willing to pay for. Companies like Lighthouse 360, Intuit (Demandforce) and SmileReminders all make a ton of money sending email/postcard/text communications to patients on behalf of dental practices. It's not uncommon for services like these to cost $100-$300 per month and be worth every penny.
Where would the network come in? Well, it turns out that the software made by the companies I mentioned is mostly applicable to any industry where patients schedule appointments, so you can cross market between, say, a hair salon and a dental practice to try to get patients of the dental practice to make appointments to get their hair cut and vice versa. A company that integrated with all the major management systems across industries could create a site similar to Yelp! which would help customers find and select local small businesses.
I do wish the original author had written about an area that he actually understood. The dental practice management system market is among the worst to try to disrupt. The entrenched players are terrible and yet there's so much friction, that it's almost impossible to dislodge them. All the innovation is happening from companies that build integrations to pull relevant data out of those management systems to do the interesting stuff.
Where would the network come in? Well, it turns out that the software made by the companies I mentioned is mostly applicable to any industry where patients schedule appointments, so you can cross market between, say, a hair salon and a dental practice to try to get patients of the dental practice to make appointments to get their hair cut and vice versa. A company that integrated with all the major management systems across industries could create a site similar to Yelp! which would help customers find and select local small businesses.
I do wish the original author had written about an area that he actually understood. The dental practice management system market is among the worst to try to disrupt. The entrenched players are terrible and yet there's so much friction, that it's almost impossible to dislodge them. All the innovation is happening from companies that build integrations to pull relevant data out of those management systems to do the interesting stuff.