Allen Ali Nasseh, DDS, MMSc, is an endodontist and educator at Harvard School of Dental Medicine, where he serves in several academic and advisory roles. He is also president and CEO of EndosKool, an endodontic education and innovation company. In this interview, Nasseh discusses how digital integration, advanced imaging, and artificial intelligence are influencing dentistry and endodontics while emphasizing the importance of thoughtful adoption, interdisciplinary communication, and technologies that meaningfully improve patient care.
Inside Dentistry (ID): What do you see as the most significant trends shaping dentistry currently?
Allen Ali Nasseh, DDS, MMSc: The two most significant forces shaping dentistry are digital integration and artificial intelligence. Digital dentistry is already transforming how we diagnose, plan, deliver, and evaluate treatment. AI also represents the next layer of that transformation, with potential applications across dental education, clinical decision support, imaging, patient communication, practice management, research, product innovation, and many more applications yet to be developed.
The larger shift is not simply the introduction of new devices or software. It is the gradual creation of a more connected and information-driven model of care. The challenge will be determining which technologies genuinely improve clinical outcomes and efficiency, rather than merely adding complexity to the workflow. Keeping things simple should remain our main goal in this effort.
ID: What advances are having the greatest impact on endodontics and patient care?
Nasseh: Digital dentistry and dynamic and static guides may not yet have had the same procedural impact in endodontics that they have had in implant dentistry, prosthodontics, restorative dentistry, or orthodontics. However, digital imaging is having an increasingly important influence on endodontic diagnosis and treatment planning. These kinds of digitally guided procedures remain inefficient for routine endodontic care, but they may soon reach critical synergy and allow greater application in clinical endodontics.
Enhanced CBCT imaging has already improved our ability to evaluate complex anatomy, resorptive defects, fractures, untreated canals, and the relationship of lesions to surrounding structures. Looking ahead, developments such as higher-resolution, lower-dose CBCT, dental MRI, optical coherence tomography, and other forms of advanced imaging may expand our ability to assess teeth before, during, and after treatment.
In endodontics, many of the most meaningful advances will come from seeing previously inaccessible anatomy and pathology more clearly—and then using that information to make treatment more predictable, conservative, and biologically sound. Combining AI with digital imaging and patient history evaluation may bring about the promise of precision medicine to dentistry and to endodontics as a whole by making treatment plans more personal to individual patient needs. Better modes of chemical disinfection and application of new techniques and technology to activate or agitate such disinfectants may help achieve greater success in clinical endodontics, which is heavily disinfection dependent.
ID: What trends are you seeing in collaboration between endodontists, general dentists, and other specialists?
Nasseh: One of the most promising trends is the development of better communication and information-sharing among members of the dental care team. As specialists are increasingly incorporated into larger group practices and interdisciplinary networks, dentistry may finally begin to realize the original promise of group practice: coordinated care centered on the entire patient rather than a series of isolated procedures.
Technology can help create the infrastructure for that collaboration. Secure access to a patient’s complete clinical history—including radiographs, CBCT scans, treatment notes, photographs, medications, and correspondence—could reduce duplication, prevent miscommunication, and improve continuity of care. Digital live communication can also allow potential educational support inside the operatory and live during clinical procedures.
The objective should be a dental version of total quality management: every provider contributing to and learning from the same longitudinal record. Any system that makes communication among general dentists, specialists, laboratories, and patients easier, faster, and more reliable represents a meaningful step forward.
ID: Looking ahead, what developments should dental professionals be paying particular attention to?
Nasseh: Artificial intelligence will affect virtually every aspect of our lives, and dentistry will be no exception. Several years ago, we founded a student AI society at our dental school because we believed students needed to understand and participate in this transformation rather than encounter it only after entering practice.
Dental professionals should closely follow the use of AI in imaging, treatment planning, documentation, patient and practice management, education, research, and communication with both patients and colleagues. We should not be afraid of AI, but neither should we accept every product labeled “AI” uncritically. The term has become a marketing buzzword, and many applications are not yet ready for routine clinical use.
Important concerns—including accuracy, bias, privacy, cybersecurity, accountability, and clinical validation—still need to be addressed. Nevertheless, the technology will continue to improve. Dentists should keep an ear to the ground so that, as these systems become reliable and reach their tipping point, we are prepared to incorporate them thoughtfully and capitalize on the improvements in productivity, communication, and quality of care that they can offer.
