The News
On September 9, the Ontario Dental Association released a sample acceptable use policy for artificial intelligence tools that members can adapt for their own practices. The ODA says the template is designed to make sure AI is used in a way that supports patients’ best interests, protects privacy, and is implemented safely and transparently.
Source: Ontario Dental Association on LinkedIn, September 9, 2026. Members can access the template through oda.ca.
MAP’s Take
This template is the missing half of something RCDSO started. The College’s Artificial Intelligence in Dentistry guidance already tells dentists what they are accountable for: assess a tool’s risks before adopting it, inform patients how AI will be used and document that conversation, tell people when they are interacting with AI rather than a person, and keep AI-generated outputs containing personal health information from being used for other purposes without express consent. What the guidance does not give you is the office-level document that turns those expectations into rules your team follows.
That is the gap we see in practices. AI has arrived quietly, through imaging software, scheduling assistants, note-taking tools and the occasional staff member pasting a patient email into a chatbot to draft a reply. Nobody decided to “adopt AI.” It just showed up. And when nobody decided, nobody wrote down who is allowed to use which tools, with what data, and how patients are told.
An acceptable use policy fixes that. It is not a large project. With the ODA template as a starting point, most offices can have a working version in an afternoon.
The Takeaway
List every tool in your office that uses AI, including the ones staff adopted on their own. Then adapt the ODA template so each one is covered, and make sure your consent and documentation steps match what RCDSO’s guidance expects.