Voice perio charting at Heartland Dental: what a 27-office Bola AI pilot reported
How the case names it:
- Bola AI Voice Perio (voice-controlled periodontal charting)
- Bola microphones (delivered to each office as part of setup)
- The office's existing practice management system (Bola's current site lists Dentrix, Dentrix Ascend, Eaglesoft and Open Dental integrations)
Result lines that name it
- Bola's case study reports that hygienists saved an average of 18.5 minutes per day. The study says this figure assumes an even mix of new and re-care patients. Our reading is that it is partly an estimate, not a straight stopwatch measurement.
Source - In Bola's survey, the share of hygienists who said they usually or always relied on a second hygienist or assistant to record probe results fell from 47% before the pilot to 16% with Bola. These are self-reported survey answers.
Source - A practice manager quoted in Bola's case study said hygienists no longer needed a dental assistant present during perio charting. That let the office book new patients even when no assistant would be available.
Source - According to Bola, every office that was installed, trained and had its microphones in under 10 days (9.83 days on average) completed more than 100 voice perio charts during the pilot. One of these offices did 40 charts in the week after setup.
Source - Bola reports a 9x revenue-based return on investment and a total value of $36,000 per office in treatment revenue. It attributes this to more complete perio charts and more full-quadrant (rather than localized) treatment. Our reading is that these are Bola's modeled revenue figures, not collections reported by the offices.
Source
What the case says did not go well
- Offices with slow rollouts used it much less. Offices that took more than 10 days to get installed, trained and equipped averaged 31.8 days, and only 5-10% of them passed 50 voice charts during the pilot (Bola's case study).
- Bola's own materials give conflicting cost and return figures. The case study PDF's summary gives $2,268 a year in cost against $22,500 a year in return, while a later page of the same PDF lists annual costs of $18,600 (present value). The press release says $2,500 a month in cost against $22,500 a month in return. Get your own price in writing.
- Bola's marketing figures have grown since the study. Its current Voice Perio page claims 20+ minutes saved per hygienist per day and 10-15 minutes per perio exam, while the same page still cites 18.5 minutes a day from the Heartland study.
- Our caveat: Bola ran and published the study. The analyst is not named and the analysis itself is not published. The data is from 2022. The press release says Heartland offices could get a special discounted rate.
- Reports from r/DentalHygiene commenters (January 2026) are mixed. A Bola user says it works only about half the time. A hygienist says accuracy depends on microphone quality and operatory noise, and that there is a learning curve. Another hygienist, describing a voice system used about four years earlier, forgot to disconnect it, and small talk was picked up as numbers, so the whole chart was wrong. A hygienist using a different product (Denti.AI) said its perio charting usually works fine, but mistakes have to be caught quickly.
Cost paragraph from the case
Bola's case study lists average setup costs at the time of the study of $140 for microphones, plus staff time it values at $100 for install and $200 for training. Its summary gives an annual cost of $2,268 and does not say what that covers. Bola's own September 2023 press release says a monthly cost of $2,500 instead, so the two documents disagree. The press release also says a special discounted rate was available to Heartland Dental offices. Current pricing is not disclosed: Bola's Voice Perio page lists no price and directs visitors to book a demo.