Perio by voice · 4 of 9
Your shadow week
For a few sessions Mesio charts alongside your assistant and writes nothing at all, so you can see how close it is before anything depends on it.
Voice charting asks a practice to trust software with a clinical record. Shadow mode is how that trust gets earned rather than asserted: for a week, both charts exist, and only one of them counts.
What actually changes
For your assistant, nothing. They enter perio into your practice system exactly as they do today, at the same pace, with the same screen. They are not being tested and they are not being replaced this week.
For you, one thing: you open a Mesio session for the exam and call your numbers as usual. You are still calling them to your assistant. Mesio listens in.
Turn it on once for the practice, in Settings → Voice charting → Shadow mode.
Mesio stays quiet
There is a setting called Mesio stays quiet during shadow sessions, and it is on by default. It matters more than it sounds.
Normally, when Mesio is unsure of a tooth, it chimes and asks you to repeat it. That is right when you are dictating to Mesio. It is wrong this week, because you are dictating to a person, and a chime asking you to do something for the software would interrupt the room for no reason.
So with quiet on, Mesio never speaks, never chimes, and never stops to wait. It keeps charting and quietly notes every point where it would have asked. Those become a line in the report: how many times it would have interrupted you. That number falling is one of the better signs that it is learning your voice.
Turn quiet off when you are dictating to Mesio directly — reading a practice chart aloud, for instance. Then you want the prompts, because there is nobody else in the conversation.
What Mesio does and does not do this week
- Does not write perio to your practice system. Not once, not by accident. The chart your assistant types stays the record.
- Does still write your notes, and your treatment plan, when you sign. Only perio is held back.
- Does save its own chart on the visit, so the findings are in the Mesio record and in the note's narrative.
- Does compare, once it can see the chart your assistant entered.
How long
Until five sessions in a row agree at ninety-seven percent or better. Most practices get there inside a week. There is no penalty for taking longer, and the report will tell you what is costing you — usually a handful of words, occasionally a microphone.
If you would rather run it for a month because that is what makes your team comfortable, do that. The switch is a button, and it stays where it is until somebody presses it.