ComparetheDentist

Inspiration

Dental care is one of the biggest out-of-pocket health costs for Aussie families, and most parents have no easy way to compare clinics or understand a quote. The Child Dental Benefits Schedule (CDBS) gives eligible kids up to $1,158 in dental care over two years, but only about one in three eligible children actually use it. Parents don’t know if their child qualifies, what’s covered, or which clinics bulk bill. We wanted to fix that with an app that turns a confusing dental quote into a clear answer in seconds.

What it does

Compare the Dentist helps parents get their kids’ dental care covered and compare clinics on price, quality and location.

Kids Check: three quick questions tell parents if their child is likely eligible for the CDBS. Fixed rules make the decision, not AI. Scan Quote: take a photo of a dental quote. The app reads it, removes personal details on the iPhone, pulls out each treatment, and shows line by line what the CDBS covers, what you’d pay, and what you’d pay at a bulk-billing clinic instead. Listen: a spoken summary of the result, so it’s accessible to everyone. Clinics: find nearby clinics with bulk-billing filters. How we built it SwiftUI iOS app with a three-tab layout. Apple Vision for on-device text recognition of the quote. On-device PII redaction (regex plus Apple’s NaturalLanguage framework) removes names, Medicare numbers, phone numbers and dates before any AI sees the text. Apple Foundation Models for on-device extraction and plain-English explanations, using @Generable output types and tools that look up the official 2026 CDBS schedule and find clinics. SCX, an Australian-hosted AI service, as a sovereign cloud option. ElevenLabs for natural voice output, with Apple’s built-in voice as a fallback. All money maths and eligibility logic run in Swift code, checked against the official schedule. The AI only extracts and explains. The original web app was built on Lovable (comparethedentist.lovable.app). Challenges we ran into Making sure the AI could never get a dollar amount or eligibility decision wrong. We solved this by keeping every calculation in deterministic code and checking every extracted line against the scanned text. Getting SCX authentication working. At one point the app showed SCX as connected when it had actually failed and fallen back, so we added honest status badges and test buttons in Settings. Keeping personal health and Medicare details private while still using AI. Building and testing on new Apple Intelligence APIs under hackathon time pressure. Accomplishments that we’re proud of A full pipeline (Read, Protect, Understand, Check, Explain) that works end to end on the phone. Personal details never leave the device, and the app works with no network at all. Accurate CDBS coverage using all 76 items from the official 2026 schedule. Going from a web concept to a working iOS app with on-device AI, sovereign cloud AI and voice in one weekend. What we learned On-device AI is fast, free to run per user, and good for privacy, but it works best when it explains rather than decides. Trust matters more than features in health. Showing parents exactly what the AI sees builds confidence. Government benefits like the CDBS are underused because they’re confusing, not because families don’t need them. What’s next for ComparetheDentist Bring the CDBS checker, quote scanning and voice features into the main web app. Partner with clinics for live pricing and availability data. Expand beyond kids to private health insurance gap comparisons for adults. Launch a pilot with families and clinics in Sydney, then go national.