The Campbell Academy Blog | Colin Campbell (67)

The Darkness of the future? Part 2 - Dental

As I look forward to the future framed by what I wrote about in part 1 of this mini two-part series about the future, I wonder what will happen to dentistry in the next ten years.

I have a habit of writing about this occasionally because I learned this from Seth Godin as he used to future scope technology in his blog.

The first thing I do when I'm thinking about the future is, look behind me to see where we were.

In 2014, in the bungalow where we were located before building the new practice, we invested a quarter of a million pounds in technology for a digital expansion into more advanced CBCT, IOS scanning, in-practice milling and laboratory.

We were among the first people in the United Kingdom to use CEREC Guide 2 for guided surgery.

Next year that will be ten years ago.

What we were doing there was utterly revolutionary, and it's now completely every day.

The stuff that we advanced at that stage (at least most of it) is now used widely everywhere, even though we were one of the first people to do lots of the things we were doing (it didn't feel like that at the time).

And so, now we look forward again and wonder what dentistry will be like ten years from now and how we can advance and move forward and capture this excitement, understanding that various aspects of dentistry will be dead by that stage.

In the past few months, I've been given access to some extraordinary technologies, which will probably bring aligners onto the high street and shopping centres with the touch of a button.

Why will we need a dentist for that?

Suppose you think for a minute that IOS scanning isn't going to be wirelessly linked to your iPhone with a little device that you can pop on the end of your finger. In that case, you're absolutely deluded that technology is already here, and it will only expand and expand moving forwards now.

But other things will change dramatically.

It's absolutely feasible that there will be practices ten years from now where dentists do not prepare the teeth, and when I say a dentist, I mean, anyone human.

I have to be careful what I say about that because I'm not allowed really, but I have seen the future here, and it is almost here, and it will take your job away.

Some aspects of dentistry will remain for the foreseeable future. Still, more and more of it will be brought into augmented reality (think visors that will give you so much information as you do the procedure that you will be able to be better and better).

In virtual reality, think about how we explain and discuss with patients their possible treatment options (or what our treatment coordinators do to be more accurate).

All of this is underpinned by the fact that practices will need to become IT businesses which also do dentistry.

If you don't have an IT infrastructure and strategy for your IT, you will never ever be able to keep up with this.

All good businesses know this, whoever they are.

You only have to take one look at Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham to see the IT infrastructure it has, to understand why it is catastrophically failing.

The future of dentistry is extraordinarily bright.

I suppose that is true for people at the cutting edge and the highest point of the financial pyramid.

Perhaps the greatest challenge, and certainly in the United Kingdom, will be to be given the opportunity to work with NHS healthcare providers to provide a level of brilliant care for people who need it most.

I'm happy to take an email from anybody who wants to work with us on that.