Ever since I moved from the from the majority NHS husband and wife partnership practice that I worked in for 11 years to the facility and site that became my own, and then the development of where we are now. I've been quite fascinated by the integration of technology into dentistry.
This started first of all with the acquisition of our first CBCT machine in 2009, (when I felt that we were right behind the curve). And it turned out that this was one of the first Carestream machines in the United Kingdom.
The next year we would be CBCT scanning impressions to try and invert them to turn them into models so that we could make crowns from them. And the next year we were at that stage we were using the first Carestream iOS camera, and then the first iTero, etc, etc.
In 2014 we used CEREC Guide 2, which was CEREC's first iteration at a mill surgical guide using guided surgery. I provided a CEREC Guide 2 implant for my wife, including a custom healing abutment using CEREC almost 10 years ago.
Then the practice got bigger, and the organization got bigger and we became more and more obsessed with utilization of technology in order to make us quicker and better and more human and more effective. And so, we have trialed many things, (and lost money on some) and integrated cloud-based systems in almost everything: practice milling, practice printing, digital design, and then moving on into the new technologies which are coming towards us, like Smilecloud integration for Straumann. The use of the new Straumann iOS scanner and the new Midas printer for printing crowns chair side.
We did this though as a choice because we were interested and fascinated and because I fundamentally felt that it would make our business better and more profitable and more robust (and it certainly did).
What's happening next though, is that people are going to have to do it by necessity. One of the things that is apparent to all the suppliers and the different people in the industry and the dentist industry is that we have an extraordinary capacity problem.
There are plenty of people in the United Kingdom who want dentistry and who cannot get it. And plenty of dentists who would like to provide more dentistry but seem to be short on capacity. One of the best ways, actually the least expensive ways of doing this, is to invest in technological solutions that make things better.
A good metaphor for this is something that happens in our practice on the daily basis, where our clinical nurse specialist team do diagnostic appointments for patients who are undergoing implant treatment. These diagnostic appointments are chargeable (and to quite a reasonable degree because they're so valuable).
In a level one implant in our practice that is often more than 1000 pounds worth of diagnostic investigation and planning, including a CBCT photography, digital model production, digital wax up production and the production of a surgical guide.
This can be carried out by a dentist in the treatment room, but it can also be carried out by a nurse in our OPG room, which is fitted with a chair which allows all of that to be undertaken. That changes the OPG room into a fee-paying surgical area, and it changes the nurse into a high grossing associate.
What then happens is it pulls space out of the associate book and allows them to do more dentistry of higher volume. Therefore, increasing the productivity effectiveness, and efficiency of the whole organization.
Multiply this across the board with the use of technology, working with AI transcription for note taking, working with CRM systems which allow you to build your contacts into your practice management system, and working with all the advances in imaging and other areas of work, and you begin to become a practice which can do twice as much revenue as that which you could do before with the same amount of space.
We will be able to extrapolate these technologies through all aspects of dentistry (the MIDA’s printer, which has been released by Straumann in conjunction with Sprint ray could change NHS dentistry for crown production ).
All of this is coming and coming quick.
You can do it by choice, but you will do it by necessity.
It's just you don't want to be the last person to implement this and learn how to do it.
That's a s£*t place to be.
Blog Post Number - 4231
Leave a comment