THE NEW LOOK OF PRACTICE DESIGN

Breaking free from traditional models is increasingly essential for practices seeking success in highly competitive markets. One New York practice shows what’s possible with an added innovation: Mouth Mapping.

By Howard Gensler

IMAGINE YOU’RE A PATIENT. You pop in from the bustle of Warren Street, just west of City Hall in Manhattan, and find yourself in a coolly elegant space—architecturally contemporary and warm yet futuristically clinical. That balance is intentional. On the surface, Smile House feels like an elevated take on the dental spa concept, which makes it immediately welcoming and accessible. But it strives for much more.

While medical‑dental integration is a concept discussed ad nauseam, Smile House is one of the few practices showing how to bring it to life. At its core is the belief that whole‑body wellness begins with dental longevity, and that data, design and personalized care can uncover the root causes of systemic problems—integrating dentistry more seamlessly, and more marketably, into overall wellness than ever before.

Designing a New Experience—That Delivers

Smile House’s location in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood is the brainchild of longtime dental innovator Dr. Jonathan B. Levine, whose Upper East Side practice has thrived for decades, and his son
Cody, Smile House’s cofounder, head of experience and cofounder (alongside his brother, Julian) of the Twice oral wellness brand. The Levines’ philosophy is simple: healthier mouth, healthier life.

The clinical vision behind Smile House is rooted in Dr. Levine’s decades of experience, plus his uncanny ability to connect with patients who demand uncompromising care. Over the years, he has treated high-profile public figures and business leaders, but also plenty of everyday patients who simply place extraordinary value on health, longevity and esthetics.

Translating that depth of insight into a practice model patients can immediately understand, trust and gravitate toward falls to Cody. He grew up around dentistry but pursued the entrepreneurial path, giving him a unique semi-outsider’s vantage point on how to design a patient experience that feels both comfortingly familiar and electrifyingly innovative. In that respect, the Smile House brand’s approach is almost Steve Jobs–esque: Anticipate what patients will want at the exact moment they’re ready for it—before they even realize it themselves—and then reinforce that experience with clinical rigor and scientific credibility that can genuinely deliver on the promise.

Smile House handles the oral-care basics, of course: six-month prophies, fluoride treatments, the usual. But also in house are an orthodontist, prosthodontist, periodontist, oral surgeon, implantologist and a state-of-the-art digital laboratory. Care for Botox, or trendy red-light photodynamic therapy to iron out incipient wrinkles? Coming right up! Patients with TMJ and jaw pain—or those just in search of a little TLC—can relax with a face-and-jaw massage from, as one patient raves, “the best hands in New York City.”

From Global Missions To Manhattan

The concept grew partly out of Dr. Levine’s charitable work with the GLO Good Foundation (the nonprofit he founded with his partner and wife, Stacey Levine), which began after a patient—musician Lenny Kravitz—invited him to bring the same care he’d provided on a mission trip to Rwanda to Kravitz’s longtime community in Eleuthera, the Bahamas. Today, GLO Good operates a 14‑chair high‑tech clinic there. Roughly 75 volunteer clinicians provide free care each year to thousands of adults and children who might otherwise go without. That experience, Dr. Levine says, brings the joy and became a driving force behind Smile House: a belief that when dentistry and medicine truly collaborate, people get healthier.

Dr. Levine was, in 1982, one of the first dentists to do porcelain veneers, and he boasts some two dozen patents behind the products of GLO Science, his teeth-whitening brand (GLO stands for “guided light optics”) that works via the dual application of heat and light. Add to that his son’s desire to deepen the impact of dental care and you end up with this posh, beautifully appointed urban retreat, which opened in April 2025. It is, Cody Levine says, “the culmination of everything my dad has built, and his philosophies.”

The Architecture of Patient Experiences

Smile House, Cody says, is bolstered by three pillars. The first is the practice’s signature Mouth Mapping and diagnostics program. What is it? Returning to the Steve Jobs analogy, it’s difficult to imagine “1,000 songs in your pocket” to someone used to portable CD players—but once you distill the innovation into a simple, intuitive concept like the iPod, everything clicks. Mouth Mapping works the same way. (More on this in a moment.)

The second pillar is gathering all dental specialties under one roof. The third is increased attention to hospitality: a dental spa, yes, but one tuned to the heightened excellence and expectations of the Gotham crowd (and those who travel there to see their dentist). “Our goal here,” Cody says, “is to design an experience that’s like a deep breath of fresh air, that feels good.”

A key goal is to help patients extend and enjoy their “health­span”—the amount of time one spends at or near the peak of good condition—not just their lifespan. “No one wants to live longer and not be healthy,” Cody adds. “So how do you live healthier while you’re alive and also live longer?”

Dr. Levine says you do so by comprehending how the mouth affects the body—using oral health indicators to get ahead of disease that might be percolating, ever so gently, elsewhere. “We’re living in a health care sickness model where 20 percent of this country’s GDP—$4 trillion or $5 trillion—is spent on health care,” he laments. This is partly because we wait too long to discover we’re sick, as even preventive analysis and treatment can be too expensive for many people to countenance.

Dentists “can play a critical role” in helping fix this, he adds. “We can detect inflammatory markers in a patient’s saliva. We can see glucose levels, and the bacteria that not only cause inflammation in the mouth but in all these other organs.” But how do you turn that into a practical reality that gets delivered during normal appointments? And how do you explain to patients that their dentist could determine that oral bacteria was also causing inflammation of the heart, greatly increasing the risk of a heart attack or cognitive decline? What price would they assign to that?

Smile House’s Mouth Mapping—which has earned a registered trademark, by the way—provides the answer.

From Complex Biology To a Boundary-Pushing Brand

“Mouth Mapping looks at esthetics, structure, function and biology,” Dr. Levine says. “Esthetics is now done through a digital workflow. Structure is a standard of care—everybody gets a CT scan and X-rays, not just two-dimensional X-rays. We see things today that we’ve never seen. We see nasal obstruction that forces people to breathe through their mouth. Their mouth dries out. Bacteria festers. They can’t get into deep sleep. And if you can’t get into deep sleep, you can’t regenerate your body. If you can’t regenerate your body, you end up with high blood pressure and all these oxidative stresses that cause cancers. And you’re going to have a shorter lifespan.

“A CBCT scan,” he continues, “tells us what the bite is like. Are the teeth out of position? Everybody gets an iTero scan. And then we look at all these biological things. Everything’s a biomarker. We test 200 different bacteria, working with a company called Bristle Health”—which manufactures saliva tests that can detect an array of potential problems. “The process is called ‘shotgun metagenomics,’ and we can see what the balancing act is in the microbiome of the mouth.”

It’s the same, in essence, as looking at the microbiome of the gut, only less invasive. If the body’s bad bacteria are overpowering the good, the patient is experiencing “dysbiosis,” a bacterial imbalance that can lead to a parade of horribles. There are 57 inflammatory diseases, Dr. Levine says, each with a connection to inflammation in the mouth. So while Smile House’s hygienists are cleaning patients’ teeth and gums—the good doctor calls hygienists the “rock stars” of the dental practice, presumably even when the actual rock stars are around—they’re also collecting saliva to be tested for biomarkers with Oral Genome’s 15-minute saliva test, and perhaps doing a finger prick for a drop of blood that can identify more than two dozen key biomarkers. This level of dental-medical integration is being used in only a few practices around the country. “Through the saliva,” he says, “we can detect the risk factor for diabetes and for inflammation in the body.”

Smile House’s services extend to airway sleep evaluation to treat obstructive sleep apnea, for which the Levines make their appliances in-house. “Good, deep sleep is the most important,” Cody says.
“It could add years to your life.”

Another unique offering is Emface treatment, which uses high-intensity facial electrical stimulation (HIFES) technology to produce collagen for what Cody calls a “nonsurgical facelift.” (Smile House is the first dental office in the Northeast using it for treatment.) “After about four treatments, you’re going to see a lifting and tightening of the skin.” It’s an esthetic treatment, sure, but it also helps with the fitting of a full mouth of veneers and has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for TMJ as well.

Dr. Jonathan Levine with sons Julian (left) and Cody

The Integration Era Arrives

Smile House is just getting started. In five years, the Levines would like to see a greater expansion of dental-medical integration. Eventually, in fact, father and son might add a physician to their team of doctors. “That’s the future of diagnostics in the dental office,” Cody says, “where medical professionals can see us as a conduit helping with prevention.”

For now, a model like Smile House may be viable only in big markets such as New York, Los Angeles or Dubai. But much like the early days of the dental spa movement, their approach is likely to gain acceptance—and fuel patient demand—nationwide. For practices preparing for that shift, or planning new offices in the coming years, Smile House offers a blueprint: Deliver cutting‑edge care that elevates both the length and quality of life, and you create a path to sustainable entrepreneurial success.