Collaborate with Parents and Dentists Online for Free

By Dr. Greg Jorgensen
Rio Rancho, NM – www.gregjorgensen.com

We live in a busy world where it is increasingly more difficult for people to get together face-to-face. Not a week goes by where the parent of a new patient says they will have to go home and discuss the proposed treatment plan with the spouse that wasn’t able to attend the initial exam. Similarly, most of us have a list of patients we need to discuss with their referring dentist or oral surgeon. Getting all of these people together used to be inconvenient and time consuming. In today’s digital world, there are tools available online that allow us to meet without being in the same room. One of these is a website called Join.Me.

Although it is not the only such service available, this one is easy and it is free. Join.Me is a product from the same people who provide a service you might be familiar with called LogMeIn. In a nutshell, Join.Me allows any person who has a computer and Internet to share his screen in real time free of charge. The LogMeIn company uses the “freemium” marketing model to sell its services. They give users their basic service for free and then offer a full-service version at a premium (or fee). Here’s how you can use Join.Me to help you meet online with parents, dentists, and specialists without leaving your office.

Open any browser on your computer and go to the website www.join.me (not www.joinme.com). Upon arriving at the site you will be greeted with two options. You can either share your screen or join someone else on their screen. If you want to share yours, select the basic service and click on the orange button in the Share panel. Your computer will quickly install a small piece of software that starts the session and a small orange control panel will appear at the top of your screen. You will be assigned a 9-digit code in that control panel that you will give to the person who will join you on your computer.

Instruct the person with whom you want to collaborate to also open www.join.me on their computer. Have them enter the 9-digit code into the box under the word Join and click the green button. Their computer will then connect with yours and they will be seeing exactly what you have on your screen. It’s that easy! You can even let them control your mouse by giving them permission in the Join.Me control panel at the top of your screen.

Pretty cool!

3 thoughts on “Collaborate with Parents and Dentists Online for Free”

  1. Our office utilizes Camtasia software by TechSmith to record the screen, we pull up the patient’s chart and move through the photos and x-rays with narrative, we save the recorded file to DropBox(an on-line service) and then e-mail a DropBox link to the doctor we are collaborating with. Since doctors are very busy, they can review the video when they have the time and can get back with our doctor if they have any questions. This saves so much time, we find it invaluable! Our referring doctors seem to really like it, as well.

  2. this is my first but not last time trying this.

    So today I called a mom (this was scheduled ahead) who lives 30 miles from the practice and stays at home with young children. I opened Dolphin and then join.me

    I then instructed the mom to open join.me and enter a numerical code that was generated by join.me on my computer. as soon as she did that, she could see Dolphin on my computer and, I think more importantly, she could follow where my mouse pointer was directing her eyes. I said “look at this” and she immediately could see what I was looking at. so simple and she loved it. It took about 15 minutes which was in the schedule. it allowed me to get my point across, do it without getting behind in the office and not only did the mother not have to travel but there were no distractions to our conversation like there can be in the office when young kids have tagged along.

    She loved it. I loved it. It made a very nice impression about me and technology. Thank you Greg J and the AAO.

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