Because February is “National Children’s Dental Health Month”, we here at True Smile Orthodontics want to give children every opportunity to find new and creative ways to care for their teeth as well as their orthodontic work. We have discovered a new and exciting app that can be used on your iPhone or iPad. This is called the Snap Smile Share app. This can be downloaded free in the App Store. This is a great way for young adults to share ideas with friends, as well as keep encouraging each other to care about their teeth and braces. snapsmileshareapp
“Snap Smile Share aims to improve treatment compliance and enhance the orthodontic experience of young patients with braces. The app’s first feature turns the patient’s phone into a time lapse video tool which creates a short video of the patient’s teeth straightening and their smile improving.
In-app camera filters, picture alignment, and cropping features allows the patient to take a perfect picture from their phone every time. The video is then saved to the phone’s camera roll for viewing or sharing with various social media accounts.
The mobile app’s next feature provides patients with traditional braces a chance to “try on” different popular elastic colors. Finally, the app sends daily text notifications to remind patients to change aligners or to replace elastics and to wear their retainers.
Snap Smile Share is affiliated with the Instagram account @Braces, one of the largest social media communities of orthodontic patients with approximately twenty thousand followers. Patients and followers on @Braces have expressed a need for an app on their mobile phones to record their smile improving in real time, assist them to comply, to remind them of their orthodontist’s instructions, and to explore different colors available for their braces.
App users can gather input from friends on which colors they should select next by sharing a picture of their choice via social media. After the patient decides on their color or color combination, a picture of their selection can then be saved on their phone’s camera roll and later shown to their orthodontist.
There is an in-app feature for orthodontists to add their practice’s logo and/or text to a patient’s time lapse video. The in-app feature is important if an orthodontist would like to use the app to make videos of their patient’s progress. The orthodontist can then use these videos for marketing purposes to show successful treatments on social media accounts, i.e., Facebook, Instagram and/or their website.