Mike's Newsletter | Meta Decodes Brain Signals. AI Gets Resitcrted.
- Mike Vidikan
- Jun 29
- 6 min read
Updated: Jul 1
Welcome Orthoprenuers!
Every week, we bring you the latest in practice management, marketing, profitability, and next-level ortho techniques so you can work smarter, grow faster, and build the practice you want.
In this issue:
🚨 News Update🦾 Mike’s Prompt
🗓️ Plan Your 2026 CE Calendar
📢 Juan’s Marketing Tip
🔥Trending in the OrthoPreneurs Facebook Group
🎙️ The Orthopreneurs Podcast
✨ Final Thought
🚨 News Upadte
🤖 Meta’s Brain2Qwerty v2 Turns Raw Brain Signals Into Real-Time Text Without Surgery
Meta AI just announced Brain2Qwerty v2, a major leap in non-invasive brain-computer interfaces. Built on v1 (published today in Nature Neuroscience), the system uses magnetoencephalography (MEG) helmets to capture brain activity while participants type, then decodes those noisy signals into coherent words and sentences in real time. Trained on roughly 22,000 sentences from nine volunteers, it achieves 61% average word accuracy (78% for the top performer) by combining end-to-end deep learning with fine-tuned large language models. Unlike invasive implants, nothing enters the body, and Meta is open-sourcing the training code plus the v1 dataset to accelerate research.
Why it matters: This points to a future where thought-to-text becomes a seamless part of everyday life. As the technology improves and hardware shrinks from room-sized scanners toward lightweight, portable headsets, we could see hands-free communication for anyone with temporary or permanent speech or mobility limitations, instant note-taking during meetings or while driving, and entirely new interfaces for computers, vehicles, and medical devices. What started as a medical aid is quietly laying the groundwork for an era in which our thoughts can directly interact with the digital world—faster, more privately, and more naturally than typing or speaking ever allowed.
☁️ New AI Cloud Security Bill Targets Misuse of Advanced Computing
A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced the Cloud Security Act, a bill designed to help U.S. cloud companies report suspected foreign misuse of advanced AI computing resorces. The goal is to close a loophole where restricted AI development could still happen through access to American cloud infrastructure.
Why it matters: AI is no longer just a software conversation. It is becoming a security, infrastructure, and compliance issue. For orthodontic practices, this is another reminder that vendor selection matters — especially when platforms are handling patient information, payment data, analytics, imaging, or internal business records.
🦾 Deep Dive: Use Claude Cowork to Understand Your Finances in One Sitting
Most orthodontists don't actually know their numbers between annual tax reviews. You see a monthly P&L, maybe a production report, but the real story — where money is leaking, which months are weak, where overhead crept up — stays hidden until your CPA delivers a summary months after the year ends.
Cowork can change that. In one sitting, you can hand it 12 months of financial data and get back a breakdown that would normally take an accountant hours to build.
Here's what that looks like:
Export your last 12 months of P&Ls from your practice management system into a single folder. Include your production reports, collection reports, and expense breakdowns if you have them. Point Cowork at that folder and ask for something specific:
"Analyze these 12 months of P&Ls and give me:
A month-by-month comparison showing production vs. collections (flag any month where collections lag more than 5%)
Overhead expenses by category, sorted by month, with a note on any line item that increased more than 10% from last year
The three biggest financial drains this year vs. last year
A summary of my best and worst months, with a hypothesis about why"
Cowork will read all 12 months, organize the data, run the analysis, and deliver back a clean spreadsheet or summary document with exactly what you asked for.
What you actually get back:
Instead of "You spent $X on supplies," you get "Supplies are up 14% YTD compared to last year, driven by a 22% jump in March and April." Instead of guessing why Q1 was slow, you see the data: production was flat but collections dropped 8%. Instead of waiting for your CPA, you have the answer in 10 minutes.
Why this works:
Financial analysis is exactly the kind of mechanical, pattern-finding work AI excels at. It's not creative. It's not strategic. It's reading numbers, comparing them, flagging outliers, and presenting the data in a way humans can actually use. Cowork handles all of it.
One important caution:
Cowork is only as good as the data you give it. If your monthly reports are incomplete, inconsistent, or use different categories each month, Cowork will work with what it has — but the analysis will be suspect. Before you point Cowork at your financials, spend 15 minutes making sure your P&L categories are consistent across all 12 months. If supplies are sometimes listed as "Supplies & Materials" and sometimes as "Materials," Cowork won't catch the discrepancy. You will.
Also: keep financial files secure. Cowork can read them, but don't store unencrypted financial data on shared drives or in folders Cowork has access to. Grant access to a specific folder, run the analysis, then revoke access.
✨ Astro Outlook: Week of June 29-July 5
Key date: June 29
The major astrological event this week is June 29, when Mercury stations retrograde in Cancer on the same day as the Full Moon in Capricorn. This is a powerful check-in between emotions and execution. Cancer asks, “Do people feel safe, heard, and cared for?” Capricorn asks, “Is the system actually working?” Add Jupiter entering Leo, and there is also a bigger leadership theme beginning: how visible are you, and what do you want your practice to be known for?
For orthodontists, this is a strong week to revisit conversations that keep creating friction. That might be financial presentations, new patient follow-up, team accountability, schedule stress, or how your office handles frustrated parents. The signs most likely to feel this are ♋Cancer, ♑Capricorn, ♌Leo, ♈Aries, and ♎Libra.
The takeway: don’t ignore the uncomfortable conversation. Handle it clearly, calmly, and with care.
Best use of the week: revisit one recurring problem and turn it into a better system.
🗓️ Plan Your 2026 CE Calendar
September is packed with opportunities to learn, connect, and stay ahead of what is changing in orthodontics.
Fishbein Fundamentals: An In-Office Course Focused on Orthodontic Practice Management & Marketing September 17–19 in Pensacola, Florida.
DentalMonitoring Summit 2026
September 17–19 in Renaissance Dallas at Plano Legacy West.
British Orthodontic Conference 2026
September 23–26 in Brighton, United Kingdom.
CAO 76th Annual Conference
September 24–26 in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
Bookmark the calendar, pick your priorities early, and stop letting CE planning become a last-minute scramble.
📢 Juan’s Maktering Tip
Do Not Let Good Leads Die After One Attempt
A lot of practices think they have a lead-quality problem.
Sometimes they do.
But sometimes they have a follow-up problem.
A parent fills out a form. Someone calls once. They do not answer. The lead gets marked as “bad,” and the team moves on. That is not a system. That is a leak.
Here’s the play:
Create a 7-day follow-up sequence for every new inquiry.
Use more than one channel: call, text, and email.
Respond within minutes whenever possible.
Track how many attempts happen before the lead is closed.
Separate “bad lead” from “not reached yet.”
Review booked consults by source, not just total leads.
The bottom line:
Lead quality matters, but speed and persistence matter too. You may already be paying for oportunities your team is not fully working.
🔥Trending in the Orthopreneurs Facebook Group🔥
💬Need some help from the hive mind. Dentalxchange has decided to double their price per month starting in July. Honestly, it’s a pretty good service for electronically, filing insurance claims, verifications, and integration with Ortho2. current pricing model would put me at $115 a month filing 200 claims. We used to pay ~$50. What other services are out there that can compete?.
🎙️ On the Podcast: Your Practice Isn’t Full—You Have a Bottleneck l 5MF
What if I told you your practice doesn’t need more chairs, more days, or more team members—it needs you to find the bottleneck that’s quietly killing your capacity?
In this episode of Five Minute Fryday, I’m talking about something most orthodontists don’t spend nearly enough time thinking about: throughput and capacity. After a recent Orthopreneurs RD Blueprint webinar, I wanted to share a key concept that can completely change the way you look at growth in your practice.
Too many orthodontists assume they need to hire another assistant, add another day, bring in an associate, or change the schedule when the real issue is much simpler: there’s a bottleneck somewhere in the system. Whether it’s scheduling, new patient flow, TC capacity, remote monitoring, or clinical chair time, your job as the leader is to identify the constraint, solve it, and then move to the next one.
✨ Final Thoughts: Did you notice the speling mistakes?
While AI is dominating news headlines and will continue to have an exponential impact on almost every aspect of life, let’s never forget that humanity is human and it’s up to us to bring creativity and fun to everything we do… including newsletters 😉.
First person to reply with the correct number of spelling mistakes in this newsletter wins a $50 Amazon gift card.
– Mike Vidikan
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