LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Toothpick, the UK's largest and fastest growing dental booking platform, has announced partnerships with the Scoot Network, 118.com and Thomsonlocal that will allow users to book an appointment in real-time, with one click, from each dentist profile listings. This will result in an additional 15 million people being exposed to Toothpick’s service monthly, across sites like the local newspapers of Trinity Mirror and Johnston Press as well as national sites like The Sun, The Independent and Ask Jeeves.
Mark Livingstone, CEO of Scoot and Central Index said:
“We are delighted to be partnering with Toothpick. We’re always on the lookout for niche vertical partners who offer transactional services and have developed rich datasets, and Toothpick is a fantastic example of such a niche player with whom we can work to drive real value to our mutual audiences."
Jozef Wallis, co-founder of Toothpick, said:
“Today’s consumers are used to choice and the ability to book online, whether that be for a flight or a restaurant. Partnering with Central Index, 118 and Thomson has enabled Toothpick to ensure we have the most consistent and up to date data on dental practices - coupled with the reach of these leading directory services, we can truly bring accessible NHS and private dentistry to the masses.”
The announcement comes as Toothpick surpasses 100,000 bookings made on its platform from its own traction alone in the first year, equalling £17M worth of dentistry passed to participating dentists. 50 per cent of bookings are made out of hours, validating the business value proposition of increasing access to NHS and private dentistry – with price comparison, reviews and profile information on dentists additional selling points.
Many out of hours bookings are made for emergency dental services, and the company estimates it could have already saved the NHS as much as £1M by creating the facility to book in with a dentist out of hours, instead of going to A and E. In 2012-2013 around 50 people attended A and E daily for dental emergencies, costing the taxpayer £7M.
Toothpick is backed by some of the UK’s leading early stage investors, including Passion Capital, 1 Seed, Ec1 Capital and Launcha.
Notes to editors:
Toothpick was launched in 2013 with a mission to make dentistry more consumer-friendly. The founders conducted a survey in which 450 out of 1000 dental practices failed to pick up the phone during standard practice opening hours. Only 40 per cent of them had a website or published price information. Toothpick set out to remedy this by creating a two-way channel where dentists can advertise their appointment inventory, reviews and dentists’ profiles and patients can compare prices and providers.
Through a direct integration with a global leader in practice management software, the platform gives users live visibility of dentists’ availability, and allow them to book an appointment in real-time. Calendars are updated every 3 seconds. Aggregated reviews from Google, Yelp, NHS Choices and Toothpick are provided for both practices and individual dentists. Currently over 500 new dentists are signing up to the platform monthly.
Toothpick was recently included in the Breakthrough 50 list of UK’s fastest growing companies, run by Smarta and Santander, and have been shortlisted for Best Health Startup in the Europas 2014.
