Map My Mouth: Transforming Oral Health Care in Southland.
With only 40% of adults accessing dental care and one in three New Zealanders living with untreated tooth decay, there is a pressing need for innovative solutions. Oral diseases, often preventable, continue to pose serious health risks, including associations with Alzheimer's, cancer, and heart disease. The centralisation of services, high costs, and long wait times have created significant barriers to oral health care.
Addressing these challenges head-on, Georgina Welsh founded Map My Mouth Ltd, a company dedicated to making dental care more accessible and equitable. By providing a dental screening and triaging service, Map My Mouth aims to streamline oral health services, reduce wait times, and ensure that clinics can focus on restorative treatments rather than preventative ones.
The idea for Map My Mouth struck Georgina at Electrify - a conference to empower female founders in Christchurch - where she had a lightbulb moment: why not create a mole map, but for teeth? This simple yet profound concept spurred her into action.
Georgina's vision for Map My Mouth includes targeting Māori, Pasifika and low-income adults through community outreach. Georgina has secured partnerships with No 10, Southern Institute of Technology and South Alive to deliver dental services to these communities. Map My Mouth is creating a strong foundation for future expansion and is poised to make a significant impact on oral health care in Southland.
By focusing on screening, diagnosing, and triaging, Georgina aims to make better use of clinic resources, ultimately leading to fewer broken appointments and more efficient use of staff and space.
Georgina Welsh, an Oral Health Therapist with over ten years of experience, brings a wealth of knowledge to this endeavour. Born and raised in Invercargill, she has worked in both public and private sectors, including in London’s NHS clinics and private practices. She has also taught at AUT and Otago Universities and served on the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal. Her dedication to improving oral health is evident in her extensive qualifications and professional journey.
"Map My Mouth is designed to reduce waiting times and provide care for our most vulnerable populations," Georgina explains. She highlights the current crisis, noting that one person dies each week at Middlemore Hospital due to complications from dental abscesses. "We need to move from being the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff to offering preventative care." Georgina acknowledges the challenges, including existing criteria for hospital dental care and resistance to change within the dental community.
Looking ahead, Georgina envisions franchising Map My Mouth throughout New Zealand and integrating it into the Ministry of Health’s Oral Health service. "We’ll target areas with no dentists and provide portable services to improve access and engagement," she says. Her advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is simple yet profound: "Don't be afraid, otherwise you will always wonder what if? Just do it.”
Map My Mouth is set to revolutionise oral health care, one community at a time, making a tangible difference in the lives of Southlanders and potentially all New Zealanders.
Find out more about Map My Mouth at https://mapmymouth.co.nz/