Dr. Gerald Tan: AI Dentistry, Business Betrayal & Rebuilding Trust – E588
"I tried calling my partners and their phones were not even switched on. I panicked. It was eventually discovered that my ex-partners had forged financial documents. Mm-hmm. Not only did they forge the financial documents, but they also forged Ernst & Young chief auditor's signature on those financial documents. With those forged financial documents, they went to six different banks to borrow money from each bank, plus all the money that was injected by all these investors from family offices and whatnot. They emptied the bank account and fled to China, abandoning their wives, partners, children, and families, and leaving us all high and dry—leaving the businesses, investors, and banks high and dry." - Dr. Gerald Tan, founder of Elite Dental Group
"For example, if you got involved in a very bad road traffic accident and you fractured or smashed your teeth, and if you had an old picture of yourself prior to the accident, smiling, I could take that and feed it into the AI, and the AI would redesign exactly the same kind of teeth to reconstruct all of your broken teeth—to make you look exactly like what you looked like before the accident. Which is simply amazing, isn't it? I didn't know that was possible until you just told me. Yeah. So it's all about AI design—computer-aided design driven by AI. Mm-hmm. And then, of course, the dentist or the dental technician has the right to manually override and tweak whatever the AI suggests." - Dr. Gerald Tan, founder of Elite Dental Group
"That's how AI is impacting design. A large part of what I do is designing. A lot of my patients have severely worn down, broken, or missing teeth and just have to reconstruct. So the reconstruction process always starts with design first, before you actually execute. So that's how AI is impacting my field. What's even more exciting—and I'm just so excited to tell you about this—is that I'm currently involved in an AI project that has the attention of the government, of the Agency for Integrated Care. It's caught the attention of the National Dental Center of Singapore. It's caught the attention of the Faculty of Dentistry, NUS. Caught the attention of Health Minister Ong." - Dr. Gerald Tan, founder of Elite Dental Group
Dr. Gerald Tan, founder of Elite Dental Group and the first Singaporean dentist to graduate from Harvard Business School, joins Jeremy Au to share how dentistry blends science, art, and entrepreneurship. They explore his journey from being one of 30 students in NUS Dentistry to leading an AI-driven public health initiative and surviving a devastating fraud by trusted business partners. Gerald unpacks how AI is reshaping oral health diagnostics, how public and private dental sectors have evolved in Singapore, and why legal protections alone aren’t enough in business. His story is a powerful look into what it means to lead with resilience and foresight in healthcare.