Online marketplace for transparent dental pricing

AirSmile is the name of Australia’s new online marketplace that allows dental customers to understand and compare pricing for various procedures across numerous dental practices.

According to founder Heath Fraser, the original vision of the online portal is to bring clarity to dental pricing in an otherwise opaque market, so ordinary Australians would be less worried about costs and more willing to undertake necessary procedures.

“Fifty per cent of people are not going to the dentist because of worries about cost, so we are missing out on taking care of all those people,” said the Queensland dentist.

“This is about stepping back and looking at this bigger problem. I had the opportunity, and I had the drive, so why not try and make an impact on a bigger scale?”

Easy to use like Airbnb

In addition to being a portal for dentists to list their services and prices, AirSmile features a quick search function for dental customers to access the company’s dentist network and receive instant quotes on the dental care they require.

According to Fraser, the business model of AirSmile is to deliver an easy-to-use online platform that people have come to expect from other online marketplaces such as Airbnb.

Early stages

“There are only 7000 practices in Australia, and one industry magazine, so as soon you as you start putting any information out there and people talk and you get an interest, you lose control pretty quickly,” he added.

“The PR campaigns we were running have essentially meant dentists in every state have jumped onboard. We have gone from our starting plan to a national network extraordinarily quickly.”

Still in its early stages of development, AirSmile is currently hosting about 2000 searches each month, according to Fraser, who is seeking to monetise by converting to bookings in dentists’ practice management systems.

Click here for more information about AirSmile.