Chris (00:00.205)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. I’m your host, Chris Pistorius, and today we are going to dive deep into what happens when a doctor gets tired of watching a broken system fail patients and decides to blow it up from the inside. My guest is Ingrid Murrah. She is a clinical orthodontist who walked away from her practice, not because she stopped caring, quite the opposite, but because she cared too much. She founded TwoFront, which is the world’s first AI-driven digital orthodontic platform.
which now connects specialists with general dentists across 200 practices in 24 states. This is all backed by Kraft Ventures. Now we’re talking today about how AI is reshaping not only dentistry, but really the healthcare industry at whole, but what it really takes to leave a career that you trained for, which is a huge thing, and why the biggest breakthroughs in healthcare come from people who’ve lived inside the problem. And Ingrid, thanks so much and welcome to the show.
Ingrid Murra (01:02.214)
Thank you so much, Chris, for having me.
Chris (01:04.686)
Now, I’m going go right to it, no BS, right? But you trained for years to become this clinical orthodontist. What was the moment or maybe when was the moment, maybe both, you realize you couldn’t fix the system and the problems you were seeing from just inside an exam room.
Ingrid Murra (01:21.734)
Yeah.
It was actually two moments. The first moment was my first year of residency. I was six months into training and I, before my residency in orthodontics, I had thought that braces were something that orthodontists specialized in and anyone could move teeth with clear liners. I basically thought it was like a kid’s thing versus an adult’s thing. was like, kids must be a lot harder. Long story short, I learned how to move teeth with clear liners. I was lucky enough to go to a specialty
residency that actually specialized in clear liners. Most orthodontic residencies do not. There’s only a couple. And I had this aha moment when I was like, my God, this is really hard. And no one told me this in dental school. And I felt tricked. I felt duped. And that’s when I was like, I started calling all my dentist friends from NYU being like, guys, that four hour certification, it’s not going to cut it. That was a number one. And number two was actually the first day
started practicing as an orthodontist and I felt it was honestly the worst day of my life. I had spent my whole life since I was eight years old practicing, working towards becoming an orthodontist only to realize that this system of how to practice orthodontics I was set up to fail.
Chris (02:42.968)
Wow, that had to be an aha moment for sure, right?
Ingrid Murra (02:46.831)
Yeah, was a pretty harsh reality. Hundreds of thousands of dollars and said goodbye to my 20s and here we are.
Chris (02:55.438)
So walk us through a little bit about what broken actually looked like for you from day one. What were the patients experiencing that most people outside of dentistry wouldn’t even know about?
Ingrid Murra (03:07.459)
Yeah, it’s a great question. So I like most dentists thought that if I just work really hard and become the best clinician I could possibly become that I’m gonna get out there and life’s gonna be great and I’m gonna be this great orthodontist that I’m gonna do great work. I realized that my clinical skill was just the beginning and there were all these things outside of my control that it didn’t matter how good my clinical skills were. I wasn’t gonna be able to render care to my standards because I didn’t have those. So these were things like
Chris (03:13.656)
Yeah.
Ingrid Murra (03:37.315)
like having super well trained treatment coordinators at all of my practices because I was a traveling orthodontist. Those treatment coordinators had good systems where my consultations always had their insurance verified ahead of the consultation. We had the right patient financing in place. We had the right operational infrastructure to get patients their aligners on time. We were filing claims in a systematic way where our patients are being reimbursed on time. And we have the operational infrastructure
Chris (03:42.702)
Yeah.
Ingrid Murra (04:07.312)
to make sure that our patients were actually wearing their aligners. Most of the time, I had none of those.
Chris (04:15.852)
Yeah, that’s a that’s kind of a breakthrough there for sure. I’d love to know how you can track people if they’re wearing their retainers because my son I’m about ready to throw into traffic because of it. But anyway, tell me a little bit about what does Too Front actually do and why do you think connecting with connecting orthodontist with General Dennis matters so much?
Ingrid Murra (04:38.04)
It’s a good question. So ToFront at its core is a marketplace that connects dentists to orthodontists who specialize in clear aligners using Invisalign to their practice, who are licensed in their state. And the ToFront platform provides the ability to collaborate on care super seamlessly with this AI driven platform. Through the ToFront platform, dentists also get access to treatment coordinators who are responsible for presenting treatment to patients
with the best patient financing. So we have a very high close rate. We also have a patient support team who monitors patients in treatment using a little scan device. We have a 98 % patient compliance rate because like your son, people have the best intentions, right? But the reality is wearing aligners 22 hours a day for years is a massive commitment. So we figured out how to help patients be accountable to their own success the way that it would be if you
you got a personal trainer to lose weight. So essentially it’s an all-in-one ecosystem where dentists can offer patients high quality orthodontic care without the hassles from their practice.
Chris (05:40.846)
Mmm.
Chris (05:50.478)
Wow, that’s pretty darn cool. Now you mentioned AI driven in our previous conversations. What problem would you say that AI is solving here in orthodontics specifically? Maybe not just even with your stuff, but with traditional software workflows, give me your opinion on not only what your stuff is doing, but orthodontic in general, how is AI transforming the industry?
Ingrid Murra (06:17.389)
You know, I live in a bubble and that bubble is called TooFront. So I’ll tell you what I know about how we’re using AI.
Chris (06:24.12)
Makes sense.
Ingrid Murra (06:25.36)
there are a lot of collaboration pieces between the dentist, the orthodontist, the patient, the Invisalign portal, the other software that we use, like the patient financing, right? There’s a lot of collaboration involved so that patients can get the highest quality care. That is the perfect task for AI. So we used to have humans that were involved in the loop for all these little things, things like manually stepping, checking in on claims, making sure, you know, that patients are scanning.
their teeth and if they’re not setting up an automation to make sure that human can reach out and support them. These are all little things that AI can use, AI can help us with to actually help our patients get back on track and have a better experience.
Chris (07:10.882)
That’s awesome. That’s a great way to describe that. getting 200 plus practices to change how they operate is no small thing. Trust me, I do this for a living almost. What was the biggest sales or adoption challenge that you really didn’t expect happening with this?
Ingrid Murra (07:21.725)
haha
Ingrid Murra (07:28.566)
it’s a super good question. think…
Probably every dentist who sets out to start a company to make dentists lives easier experiences this like aha moment Which is that I thought that just having the platform itself would be enough But to your point getting someone to change behavior is like an extremely hard thing so we’ve actually spent like the past three and a half four years on making our onboarding as Like great for that dentist
possible. It’s really all about the team as I’m sure everyone here knows. It’s how can we get the team to drive that adoption and I think the biggest thing that we’re focusing on is supporting the dentist from a leadership perspective on how to communicate about this so that their team adopts because what we say doesn’t matter what the dentist says is what actually matters.
Chris (08:26.306)
Yeah, that’s absolutely the truth. healthcare is notoriously hard to sell into and traditionally hard to sell into, but how do you think about trust with dentists, with orthodontists, with patients? How do you go about that when you’re talking to potential new customers, I guess?
Ingrid Murra (08:47.116)
You you said it at the beginning that I’m a clinician who’s doing this. So I know it inside and out. There’s been a lot of companies ranging from, you know, mail order aligners to other competitors that are still in the market currently that are our competitors. And I’ve got to tell you, like, if you’re not a clinician, you don’t know the problem through and through.
Chris (08:51.758)
Mm-hmm.
Ingrid Murra (09:11.31)
And I think that’s the truth. Like I now understand that if I’m gonna buy something from a company or a subscribe, I actually want to know who that founder is because if their background is just starting, you know, different companies in different industries and they’re just here to apply sales and marketing, that company is not going to work for me. I need a, I really think it comes from the founder who is trying to solve a problem for themselves, which will then translate to actually getting results for their customers.
Chris (09:41.454)
That’s great. Awesome. What’s I always love to ask this question, but what’s a belief that you had when you started that you’ve completely reversed since you started building this company?
Chris (09:54.232)
put you on the spot.
Ingrid Murra (09:56.333)
That’s a hard one, a belief that I have that capitalism is bad.
Chris (10:02.358)
Yeah, good to explain
Ingrid Murra (10:06.731)
You know, I think when I was a practicing clinician, I was so angry at all the non-dental players. had, I mean, I’ll just, I’ve told them this. I had so much hatred for Invisalign for dental schools, right? For just charging us so much damn money to insurance companies. For the record, I still think insurance is the devil, but like…
Chris (10:31.374)
Me too.
Ingrid Murra (10:33.388)
But like Invisalign, nope, they’re an incredible tool that we use that has been mis-implemented and that dental offices simply don’t have the infrastructure to implement well or the time. That’s it. And so I actually think that capitalism is now amazing, better than any nonprofit, because I think that if you can create a system to financially incentivize the right stakeholders, that’s actually what changes the world.
Chris (10:46.028)
Yeah.
Chris (11:02.008)
Yeah, that’s a great analogy. It’s a great way to put that whole statement. I think that’s really cool. So you’re in 24 states now, and maybe more by now, I don’t know, but where does Too Front look in five years? Do you stay in orthodontics, or is this the beginning of something way bigger than just dental care?
Ingrid Murra (11:21.515)
The mission is to help patients keep their natural teeth for life. We believe that dentistry has been reactive for far too long and truly it’s a result of just insurance and not really understanding. The dental insurance system was built in the 1960s. All this research on how to keep your teeth came after that. So we really believe that we can transform dentistry from reactive to preventive. And it starts with straight teeth and a healthy bite.
Chris (11:33.326)
Mm-hmm.
Chris (11:50.722)
Awesome.
Ingrid Murra (11:51.391)
10 teeth by the time they’re 50. A lot of that is from misalignment and grinding away their teeth, leading to comprehensive dental work. So we’re starting with orthodontics, but we will continue to pursue different avenues to help dentists help their patients keep their teeth for life after that.
Chris (12:10.328)
Yeah, awesome. I look forward to see what you guys are, what you can accomplish for sure. Now for the listener who’s a clinician, a doctor, a specialist, whatever, they’re kind of sitting in their practice right now feeling like maybe kind of like what you did before you left. What do you want them to hear out of this?
Ingrid Murra (12:28.054)
from a offering orthodontics perspective or from a solving a problem. offering orthodontics, if they wanna see if this is the right solution for their office, first of all, our only requirement is to have a nitero. Unfortunately, that’s an Invisalign requirement that in order to offer Invisalign, they need a nitero. I wish there was something we could do about that. But if they would like to explore, they can go to mytofriend.com and apply and see if the solution works for them.
Chris (12:31.736)
Yeah. Yeah.
Chris (12:57.262)
Awesome. Well, I really appreciate your time today. We’re going to have to wrap it up with Ingrid, who’s the founder of TwoFront. We’ll have all of her information in the comments and the description. I definitely recommend checking this out. This is really cutting edge stuff that really has value and purpose. And of course, if this conversation made you think differently about healthcare, AI, or what it takes to actually build something from the ground up, share it with somebody who needs to hear it.
because I think everybody needs some inspiration every now and then. And if you haven’t already, subscribe wherever you listen and drop us a review. It takes 30 seconds and it generally helps more people find the show. Ingrid, thanks so much for your time today. Hopefully in six months or so, we can have you back and get an update and see where you’re headed.
Ingrid Murra (13:42.495)
Definitely. Thank you, Chris.
Chris (13:44.462)
Thanks, talk to you soon.
All right, awesome. You were great.
