Dental paging systems
A dental paging system lets your team signal each other without raising a voice or interrupting a patient. Here is how the three kinds differ, what to look for, and where an app-based system fits.
The quiet plumbing of a busy office.
It is how the front desk tells a doctor a patient is seated. It is how an assistant asks for help without leaving the chair. It is how a practice coordinates all day without an overhead speaker and without anyone calling down the hall.
The old versions did this with wired lights and chimes. The current ones do it with the screens the practice already owns.
Most practices are choosing between these.
A box in each operatory wired back to a panel, with a call light outside the door. Dependable, and expensive to change, because changing it means changing the wiring. Adding a room or moving a doctor is a service call.
Paging software installed on computers and run over the office network. Quick and reliable inside the building for exactly that reason. It usually cannot reach a second location, and somebody has to install it and keep it running.
Runs on the tablets, phones, and computers already in the practice. Nothing to wire and nothing in a closet. AltoSignal is this kind, and it now delivers across your own office network and through the cloud at the same time.
Six questions worth asking whatever you buy.
The message
The practical part
A call light answers none of the first three. That is usually the reason a practice starts looking.
The ones that come up before anyone books a demo.
One that tells people who is needed, for what, and in which room, without a sound in the operatory, and lets them acknowledge it so the sender knows it was seen. For most practices today that is an app on the screens they already own rather than wired lights or radio pagers. AltoSignal is built that way: staff tap who, what and where, for example Dr. Patel, Patient Ready, Op 2, and every screen shows it at once. It starts at $25 a month for the first five devices.
They solve a similar problem in different settings. Nurse call systems are built for patients calling staff in hospitals and care homes. A dental paging system is staff to staff: the front desk telling a doctor a patient is seated, or an assistant asking for help without leaving the chair. AltoSignal is the second kind.
Wireless paging usually means dedicated radio hardware and a pager on every belt. AltoSignal uses the Wi-Fi and the screens your practice already has, so there is no separate radio system to buy and nobody has to carry a pager.
Yes. A call light tells you somebody needs something, but not who, what, or where. A message that reads "Dr. Smith, patient ready, Exam 1" carries all three, and it can be acknowledged so the sender knows it was seen, and logged so nobody has to remember.
AltoSignal is priced per device, and the rate drops as you add devices. $25 a month covers your first 5 devices; devices 6–10 are $4 each, 11–20 are $3, 21–100 are $2, 101–200 are $1.50, and 201–500 are $1.25. Each band prices only the devices inside it, so a 12-device practice pays $51 a month. Pay yearly and you get two months free. Staff seats are unlimited: you pay for the screens that receive signals, not for people. Every plan starts with a 30-day free trial, no credit card. Past 500 devices, email sales@altosignal.com.
With AltoSignal, devices on the same office network deliver signals directly to each other at the same time as the cloud. Both paths carry every message, so staff keep signaling through an outage. Changing button labels or adding a channel waits until the connection is back. See how local delivery works.
Side by side with the paging and intercom systems dental offices run today.
Wired call boxes with lights and chimes, and what replacing them looks like.
Light-based visual paging outside each operatory, moved onto screens.
Windows-only light signaling and text, compared with paging on any device.
A Windows "lights" intercom on the local network, compared with cloud paging.
Cross-platform paging kept inside the firewall, compared with multi-location.
App-based intercom on Android tablets, compared with native apps everywhere.
Windows paging software with a server on the office network, compared with paging on any device.
Call boxes and text pagers in optician test rooms, compared with the handover on a screen. See also AltoSignal for eye care.
Set it up on the screens you already own in under ten minutes. Cancel anytime, no phone call.
Start 30-day free trialWant to watch it first? Follow one morning in a practice, front desk to operatory.
