South Jordan, UT - From digital health platforms to light-based therapies for oral cancer, Dr. Shankargouda Patil’s career spans much of the emerging frontier in dentistry.

Dr. Patil serves as Director of Translational Science and Digital Health Innovation at Roseman University College of Dental Medicine, where he works at the intersection of clinical care, education, data science, and public health. Trained in India and later earning a doctorate in Italy, his experiences exposed him to both resource-rich academic centers and clinics in low-resource settings.

One strand of his work is digital health. It is a broad term that covers artificial intelligence, data science, and computational biology applied to oral diseases. Dr. Patil and his colleagues are laying the groundwork to combine de-identified health records with imaging and biological data to build decision-support systems that can sit alongside a dentist in the clinic.

“Dentistry generates a huge amount of information, but most of it remains locked in charts and servers,” he said. “Our goal is to convert that into something like a map - a tool that helps the clinician see risk earlier and choose treatments that fits the individual patient.” The datasets feeding these models include radiomics, which are patterns extracted from dental and oral images and, in some projects, genomic markers. Patient identities are stripped out before analysis, he said, so that large-scale trends can be studied without exposing personal details. The long-term aim is to harness artificial intelligence algorithms to act as tools that can assist dental surgeons to flag high-risk lesions sooner, help during follow-up intervals and support more precise planning for both restorative and surgical care.

Oral cancer and oral potentially malignant disorders form another core focus of his work. Dr. Patil emphasizes that some of these conditions are preventable yet remain unevenly distributed, with incidence, stage at diagnosis, and survival strongly influenced by geography, access to care, and socioeconomic factors. In response, his research group is working on approaches that join early detection with minimally invasive treatment. His team’s current focus is on image-guided photodynamic therapy, a light-based method that uses specialized drugs to target abnormal cells. When the area is illuminated with a specific wavelength of light, the drug is activated, and those cells are selectively damaged while most surrounding tissue is spared.

In parallel with his research, Prof. Patil has been active in rethinking how dentists are trained. In his teaching at Roseman, traditional lectures are supplemented with game-based assessments, including quiz platforms that let faculty see, within minutes, which concepts students have understood and which remain uncertain. These platforms function as rapid feedback systems for both students and instructors to identify areas for improvement before students enter clinical practice. Work is also underway to integrate anatomy and other foundational subjects with augmented and virtual reality tools, which simulate the sequence and feel of clinical procedures. According to Prof. Patil, these simulators and immersive environments act as rehearsal spaces, providing an intermediate training step between plastic models and live patients, with an emphasis on safety and competence.

Beyond the university, Dr. Patil supports community-based screening and public education on major oral cancer risk factors, including tobacco use, alcohol consumption, and human papillomavirus, as well as HPV vaccination. He believes that prevention and early detection as core components of dental practice.

Dr. Patil describes his approach to technology as cautious as well as forward-looking. He stresses that AI and digital tools are intended to assist, not replace, clinical judgment. His interest in safe and reliable care is informed in part by experiences from his youth in rural India, where informal “tooth men” treated patients with rudimentary instruments in areas where formal dentistry had not yet taken root. Those early observations of the consequences of delayed or inadequate care spurred his interest in research and continue to shape his focus on leveraging technology for early diagnosis and timely treatment.

As artificial intelligence moves deeper into dentistry and the burden of oral cancer continues to fall unevenly, Patil’s work traces a wide arc: from using data to guide early detection, incorporation of AI, photodynamic therapy, and curriculum design. Taken together, these projects reflect a steady, if understated, attempt to increase access to dental care equitably.

For more information about Dr. Shankargouda Patil, please visit https://www.shankargoudapatil.com/ and https://www.linkedin.com/in/shankargouda-patil-bds-mds-phd-frcpath-uk-fds-rcps-ficd-fpfa-1692966/