Unlike Many, sikka.ai Hasn’t Been Shocked by Inflation – Its “Dental Inflation Indicator” Predicted It

When inflation recently hit its highest year-over-year increase in more than 30 years, it showed what sikka.ai was already seeing in dental recall appointments.

Dentists see patients more often in a year than physicians, on average, and are a primary line of healthcare contact…leading to explosive improvements in both diagnostic and economic indicators.”— CEO and Founder Vijay Sikka

SAN JOSE, CA, USA, November 24, 2021 — The American Farm Bureau estimates that the prototypical Thanksgiving dinner costs 14% more this year than last, used cars continue to fly off lots, and dollar stores chains are being forced to revisit both their pricing strategies and even their names. Indeed, inflation is the word on everyone’s lips these days. Enter sikka.ai’s Dental Inflation Indicator™, as discussed recently on CNBC’s “The Exchange”.

“Dentists see patients more often in a year than physicians, on average, and are a primary line of healthcare contact with the population. This is leading to explosive improvements in both diagnostic and economic indicators,” said CEO and Founder Vijay Sikka. “We at sikka.ai have built an award winning API platform that enables connection between doctors and patients for over a third of North American markets.”

sikka.ai’s Dental Inflation Indicator™, from January 2017 through October of 2021, the last full month of readings.

The classic “Dr. Copper” comparison of copper prices to the inflation rate, over the same time period.

sikka.ai has found that the average recall of dental appointments – namely, how many patients come back for those pre-scheduled appointments we all make at the end of visits to the dentist – are a close proxy of where consumer confidence, and by extension prices, are headed. Analyzing its proprietary, deidentified dataset of 35,000 practices and 122 million patients, sikka.ai’s Dental Inflation Indicator boasts a correlation of 0.744. On the other hand, the historically vaunted “Dr. Copper” approach, which compares copper prices to inflation, registers only 0.693 – substantially lower.

What’s more, as seen in the accompanying image, sikka.ai’s Dental Inflation Indicator has been ahead of changes in the inflation rate for much of 2021. While no one has a crystal ball when it comes to inflation, sikka.ai’s Dental Inflation Indicator is the next best thing. sikka.ai publishes this chart on its homepage, so everyone can gaze into the future.

This press release was originally published on November 24, 2021. View the original article here.