ITI Congress Australasia 2026: Future Frontiers, Powered by Teamwork
Melbourne
Presented by Carolyn S Dean, founder of Trilbii AI
Carolyn S Dean presented at ITI Congress Australasia 2026, the International Team for Implantology’s Australasian congress, held in Melbourne across 4 and 5 June under the theme Future Frontiers, Powered by Teamwork.
Her session ran on the Friday, facilitated by Janice Kan, alongside Prof Sašo Ivanovski.
Patient Journey: From First Search to Saying Yes
The patient journey begins long before someone contacts a practice.
From the first Google search to online reviews, website visits and social media impressions, patients are constantly interpreting digital signals. They are assessing credibility, forming expectations and deciding whether they feel confident enough to move forward. Increasingly they are also asking an AI tool to summarise all of it for them, and that summary is not one you get to review first.
For implant dentistry and other high trust treatments this matters more than anywhere else in the practice. The patient is weighing up cost, risk, permanence and the clinician personally. They are not comparing prices. They are deciding who to trust with something they cannot undo.
What the session covered
- How AI is changing the way patients search for and compare clinicians
- Why a practice has to be findable, understandable and trustworthy, and what each of those actually requires
- How response time shapes patient decision making, and why it reads as clinical experience rather than admin
- Where automation genuinely supports the team, and where it does not belong
- Why the human element matters more as the early stages become automated, not less
Because the decision to say yes rarely happens in the chair.
This event has now taken place
ITI Congress Australasia 2026 ran on 4 and 5 June. The full write up of the session, including the three trust signals that survive being summarised by an AI tool, is here: AI and the patient journey at the ITI Congress Australasia 2026.
Related reading: how to tell whether an AI writing tool is safe for your practice.
Carolyn S Dean presented Patient Journey: From First Search to Saying Yes at ITI Congress Australasia 2026 in Melbourne, facilitated by Janice Kan with Prof Sašo Ivanovski.
