Seven UGM students succeeded developing an innovation which facilitates Co-Assistant students of dentistry to meet the patients on the internet via an application named COASS. They succeded becoming the winner of ASEAN Business Model Competition 2017 and will represent ASEAN at International Business Model Competition in America in May.
“COASS is a platform which connects dentistry students who are taking profession study with the patients,” said Arief Faqihuddion, Chairman of Coass team on Friday (24/3) at UGM Journalist Forum.
Arief said by using COASS application, Co-Assistants and patients can be connected. Patients have to access COASS.id and login in order to get free consultation and perform advanced treatment. After the patients’ cases have been verified, their data including kind of disease, gender, and age will appear. Then, Co-Assistant will choose their patient based on their study case area.
The application development was started since January 2017 by Arief Faqihuddin from Faculty of Engineering collaborated with Silva Meliana and Ratihana Nurul from Faculty of Dentistry as well as Ilham Imaduddin, Damar Adi Prabowo, Ahmad Shalahuddin, and Andhika Harryajie from Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences.
“Since the first launching in early March 2017, there has been more than 100 Co-Assistants and 600 patients who input their data. Moreover, there are more than 2,000 cases solved until now,” said Arief.
Even though the treatment is performed by Co-Assistant students, the quality can be guaranteed because the treatment is performed under professional dentist supervision.
“The treatment fee is lower up to 50-80% than the real dentist, but the quality is guaranteed because it is supervised by professional dentists,” he added.
Furthermore, Silva said the application development was started from her concerns on the minimum number of dentists in Indonesia which is under the WHO ideal ratio. According to WHO, the ideal ratio between dentist and society is 1:2,000, while the ratio between Indonesian dentist and its society is 1:22,000. Meanwhile, every year there are just 600 new dentists from various universities in Indonesia. Dentistry students in Indonesia normally finish their profession study in 1,5-2 years, but almost 50% of them finish longer due to the difficulty of finding the patients who meet their study case requirements. Moreover, it is difficult to synchronize their schedule with the patients’.
“We hope this application can be beneficial for Co-Assistant students and patients as well as helping Co-Assistant to finish their profession study in time,” said Silva.
COASS.id accomodates Co-Assistant students from Faculty of Dentistry UGM, but it will provide access for students from the other universities in Indonesia in the future. All this while, they cooperate with Dental Hospital in performing their treatments. They also cooperate with Rumah Zakat charity in providing ambulance for patient mobility.
“In the future we will develop this application so it can be accessed via smartphone to give easier access to its users,” she added.