Orthodontic landscape Archives

In a recent ‘In the Loupe’ podcast, founder of 32Co, Sonia Szamocki, talked to Practice Plan Director, Nigel Jones, about the platform’s aims and how it came about. A medical doctor by background, post-qualification Sonia worked as an A and E doctor in London, before moving into the world of consulting. She spent several years consulting for companies in sectors as varied as luxury fashion, airlines, mining businesses, as well as healthcare. She then moved into medical technology (med tech). This involved building technology for patients with rare diseases. This included building a medical device to help patients who have haemophilia monitor and track their treatments which is now the leading haemophilia app in the world for patient use. Having stepped away from the Med Tech world, Sonia took some time to consider what needed to change in healthcare, which is when the idea for 32Co was born. “When we think about what your average person on the street is looking for, they're looking for treatments that help improve their lives,” she says. “So, things that are life-changing and not necessarily life-saving.” She includes treatments such as dermatology and fertility treatments as well as things to help with sleep and to improve their smile. For all of which she had noticed an increase in demand. As she admits, these are specialist in nature and generally require additional training and experience to be able to deliver them. Historically healthcare systems have trained a specific type of clinician to be specialist in those areas. Although that has worked well for a long time, as demand for these has increased there simply aren’t enough specialists. That is the case in many areas of healthcare, including in dentistry and more specifically, orthodontics, which is where 32Co started. As Sonia explains: “We have around 1,000 orthodontists in the UK, and 60 million patients. When you're treating children that have severe malocclusions, maybe that's enough. However, if you now add on the fact that every adult would quite like to have nice straight teeth, that just doesn't make sense. The ratio no longer works and so you have to try and find ways to meet that demand.” During COVID the rise in popularity of the direct-to-consumer orthodontic model indicated there are large numbers of adults who would like to have straighter teeth who were trying to find ways to do that. Sonia was curious as to why they would go online rather than visiting their dentist. Having spoken to many dentists the feedback she got was “It's a specialist treatment and we have orthodontists for a reason. They get three years at least of extra training and then that's all they do all day, every day.” Dentists were hesitant to start offering treatments that they weren’t sure they would be able to deliver perfectly. It was this feedback that sparked the idea for 32Co. Sonia wanted to explore what was needed for a dentist to feel confident enough to start delivering orthodontic treatment regardless of whether they were located in a city with good support networks or in a remoter rural area. That has been her focus at 32Co - and now at 01Health, the rebranded parent and underpinning platform of orthodontics service, 32Co and dental sleep medicine service, Aerox Health. Both already run on its software. With the new name, 01Health recently launched that platform as a standalone product for the first time, so practices and dental service organisations can licence it directly rather than going through 01Health’s own brands. She has found that the key ingredient to achieving this is providing the right support, training and infrastructure to help connect primary and secondary care. This means getting specialists to work directly with dentists to provide knowledge and share their experiences to achieve the best of both worlds. In this case that is the dentist being able to deliver the treatment, at exceptional quality, no matter where they live. Patients looking for life-changing treatments such as smile designs behave more like consumers than general dentistry patients these days. Often, they have self-diagnosed and are looking for a good quality treatment. Building trust quickly becomes essential in these circumstances. Sonia’s platform aims to bring high quality orthodontic treatments within the reach of people who are unable to access Harley Street practitioners. Her platform empowers dentists to be able to do this. “You have to overcome dentists’ clinical fears and reassure them that nothing is going to go wrong” Sonia explains. “We're going to look after you before you can even think about talking about commercial confidence. And so, you need to train people. You need to give them the foundational knowledge so that they feel like they have a bedrock of understanding. Are you going to turn them into an ortho specialist overnight? No, that's not the point. You're going to give them enough knowledge to understand the foundations and then it's important that you link them up with experts. So that's what we do.” By signing up to the platform, practices get the guidance and oversight they need to be able to offer high quality orthodontic treatments to their patients. Workflows are overseen by an orthodontist, so they receive the guidance they need to be able to feel confident to deliver the treatment. This means clinicians help satisfy their patients’ demand for life-changing treatments, while, at the same time opening up a new income stream for the practice, delivering a win-win for practices that sign up. About Sonia Sonia Szamocki is the founder and CEO of UK specialist healthcare platform 01Health, which underpins its specialist dental services 32Co and Aerox Health. Less than ten years ago, Oxford-educated Sonia was still working high intensity shifts in London’s A&E departments as an NHS medical doctor. Working in London’s top hospitals, Sonia valued the ability to chat with world specialists if she was ever unsure how to treat her patients. She identified a problem within healthcare - namely the breakdown in communications between nurses and doctors on the frontline, and experts - and felt obliged to pursue her entrepreneurial dreams. Sonia initially founded 32Co to empower clinicians, improve access to specialist dental treatment, and raise standards across the dental industry. But the mission has always been bigger. he 01Health platform connects thousands of UK dentists with orthodontic and sleep medicine specialists across the UK, to advise on clear aligner and snoring/sleep apnoea treatment cases remotely with the mission to transform how specialist care is delivered across specialities. Orthodontics is a specialist area of dentistry, requiring an extra three years of training. With approximately only 1,000 orthodontists in the UK, dentists lack the confidence to pursue more difficult cases, turning their patients onto ‘DIY treatments’ or social media ‘hacks’. A 2025 study highlights this lack of skill and confidence: 32Co found that over half (54%) of dentists surveyed preferred to stick to mild or moderate clear aligner cases, rather than take on complex cases.

Podcasts

Sonia Szamocki and 32Co – Making treatment more accessible

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