WashU Olin’s BIG IdeaBounce: 13 Startups In The Business Of Health Compete For The $50K Top Prize

Team: Health XR

School Affiliation: Washington University

Description:

Health XR is developing mixed reality software for augmented reality headsets like Microsoft Hololense and Meta Orion that use LLMs and Computer Vision to assist dentists during their operations

Problem:

Health XR solves the pain point for dentists and medical doctors often being overwhelmed managing their day-to-day appointments. Dentists often face having to be the “master of all,” when it comes to caring about individual patients and overseeing day-to-day operations. This can consist of anything from memorizing mental notes on each patient, to remembering which employees took an early vacation. The high intensity and essential work in the dentist clinic creates dozens of pain points that involve dentists being overwhelmed and requiring assistance with the millions of basic tasks they have to process at once. One oral surgeon we spoke with spends 5 to 10 hours writing notes a week. Health XR produces mixed-reality software that will use the audio and video recorded during the appointment to help their day-to-day operations, giving AI-powered real-time information to the physician to support their workflow.

Solution:

The service we will provide involves automated note-taking, and real-time information on patients’ medical history and medications when viewing them with a headset on. We will use the data from the doctors looking at x-rays and performing the procedure and be able to AI to figure out scientific discoveries that were once impossible.The product will be a business-to-business software subscription for the dentistry field that acts as an all-in-one assistance for dentists supplementing their busy work in the clinic. Dentists often are tasked with hours of busy work and memorizing that affects their ability to focus on their primary line of work, and Health XR will be able to mitigate many of these pain points. Health XR can revolutionize efficiency in the clinic and relieve many of the stressors dentists face daily, all while helping digitalize their workflow. The automated recordings will integrate directly with patient databases adding them to each patient file, and then dentists will have summarized data with key points right in front of them.

Market:

As a Software as a Service Company we would fall under the digital dentistry market, but serving the general diversity market as a whole. According to Grand View Research, the digital dentistry market was valued $6.8 Billion in 2023 and has a 9.9% CAGR through 2030. This represents digital software and equipment for end use by hospitals and dentist clinics, which would be the target market for our software. Fortune values the general dentist market size at $41.03 Billion in 2025 and $87.65 Billion by 2032, representing a 11.5% CAGR. As the population ages and grows dental work will continue to be a sizeable market represented by the strong growth, and technology will continue to advance to support it. Dentists and healthcare firms are always looking for ways to assist their practitioners and investments in digital dentistry are common to help advance the field. Health XR could also be considered a part of the Mixed Reality market which has a 45.34% CAGR from $5.87 Billion in 2025 to $38 Billion by 2030, proving to be one of the fastest-growing tech markets. Investments in companies like Meta and Apple, with Google’s recent collaboration with Samsung demonstrate the direction the tech field is going as a whole with hardware AI and mixed reality.

Competition:

There are many AI note-taking apps for general practice like school, but there are none that integrate seamlessly with mixed reality headsets or that use imaging and Audio together. Startups like Suki AI and DeepScribe provide AI-powered note-taking but have a low-value proposition in that they are difficult to use and often don’t work as intended. Devices like Plaude work well for AI notetaking but are more used in the office setting. Health XR is unique because it is trained on data tailored towards dentists and has the mixed reality aspect to improve their workflow. Our product used mixed reality to seamlessly act as glasses for the user while also recording data.

Value Creation:

The software is meant for dentists and Health XR was started by Dr. DeForest DDS. Dr. DeForest has worked with dentists in his practice, researchers, and students at the school where he works who have validated the value proposition. As a dentist myself I identified many pain points he and his coworkers faced, validating the need for Health XR’s software. Through these customer discovery efforts. I have spoken with nearly 3 dozen dentists, students, and healthcare management teams that have helped validate the need for autonomous assistance in the clinic. They helped reinforce the pain points I have faced working in my clinic that dentists are overwhelmed and need an easy way to remember information. When pitching the idea to friends and colleagues of a headset that had video pass-through while adding virtual aid to the world around them, they were all on board and desperately desired a similar product in their minds.

The Team:

Dr. Aaron DeForest DDS, Christien Wong B.S. in Business and Computer Science 26′, Mark Schulist B.S in Computer Science and Mathematics 27′, Jasmine Sun B.S in Computer Science 27′, Elizabeth Kresock PhD in computer science

© Copyright 2025 Poets & Quants. All rights reserved. This article may not be republished, rewritten or otherwise distributed without written permission. To reprint or license this article or any content from Poets & Quants, please submit your request HERE.