Okay, buckle up because this one is a bit complex, but it's been rattling around my head for about 48 hours, and I want to get it down here.
It started on Monday morning. I was on a call with someone high up in dentistry and a dental business, and it was an exceptional and extraordinary call.
It's someone I've known for a long time (I've known lots of people in dentistry for a long time), but they were telling me that the future of dentistry is entirely technological and the answer to the manpower crisis in dentistry (which is absolutely real and terrible) is technology entirely.
They went back and forth in different places in different ways, trying to explain to me that corporates were taking over dentistry in the UK to a massive level, and they were going to change the world because they would be the only ones that would invest in the technology that mattered.
They told me that dental practices would all be out of town brand new practices, a bit like mine built on retail parks, all the residential practices would close, and they would all be fused into one.
The corporates would do all this; if independence didn't follow, they would die.
They told me that the data that big companies were collecting would lead to AI diagnosis, which would mean that patients would attend a scanning centre scanned by a member of the dental team (if we can find any), who would almost certainly be paid at a much higher level because their value would go up.
The AI would make the diagnosis and the treatment plan, which would then be able to be provided by dentists that the patients could choose to take to either here, in Turkey or anywhere else.
Among all of this happening, the DSO (corporate market) will consolidate, and 50% of the UK dentistry load will be taken by them.
They will bring all their practices together into super centres on the outskirts of towns and cities in business parks (a bit like mine), and all the high-end dentistry will be done there because it's only then that they can invest in the tech.
During this conversation, I was told that that would solve the manpower problem in dentistry, high-tech practices with no reception teams and iPads to check in, where the dentist comes to collect the patient.
Dentistry would become way more efficient because of technology; therefore, we would need fewer people doing it, which would solve the problems.
The tech revolution, enhancing the team, reducing the need for dentists and nurses, and solving the workforce problem itself, somewhere along the line, AI will be part of this. Still, nobody's quite figured out yet, but it's definitely going to happen.
The problem with this model is an opposing view, a dark side, and issues related to the infrastructure that we cannot get over until we fix those and move along.
The metaphor for this is perhaps Durban, the city on the east coast of South Africa, which is a relatively young city in terms of its growth and expansion in a beautiful place with a beautiful climate and beautiful living conditions.
It was put together pretty quickly, and then everybody moved on, trying to make loads of money and make a lifestyle. Nobody paid attention to the stuff under the surface (literally).
When I was in Cape Town in the summer, I met some people from Durban who told me there is no actual infrastructure in the city, no real policing, no real protection, and everyone lives in gated communities with their own security (if they have enough money).
Worse than that, the sewers in the centre of Durban are collapsing because everybody went on and made a life, kept as much money as they could and never paid any attention to the societal aspects of infrastructure.
And this is the metaphor for where we are in the tech revolution in dentistry.
On the one hand, people who are higher up in organisations and corporations are just talking about everybody like they're a number on a spreadsheet and saying that they will react in a predictable way when the technology arrives.
But the truth is the practices are much smaller than the industry actually believes or will accept. Their ability or willingness to invest in costly technology, which needs to be updated regularly, works very well for the suppliers and their growth predictions and income. Still, it doesn't work so well for the guy who's trying to make a living and maintain a lifestyle that he's built over the years.
If we are not in a position to help support dental businesses, to decide when and what to invest in, and to understand that a significant amount of their future technology investment must be in back office infrastructure in practice management systems and customer relation management systems and abilities to market at a relatively low cost, using high tech and hr systems to track their teams and servers and computers in surgery that can be updated every three years, then you can punt as much of the high tech stuff at the front end to them as you want, but their sewers will collapse, and they will not be able to work.
We promised everyone that technology would reduce the overwhelm, but that only works if you have the foundation to stand on; if you don't build a foundation but react to fear of missing out and just pump money towards high-tech solutions at the front end, that the patient sees you are buggered because the back end will collapse.
Firstly, you must understand how much money you have; then you must decide in advance how you're going to spend it and on what and why and then you have to spend it.
Then, you must keep spending part of the money you get on updating your current stuff and investing in the new stuff which will make the most significant impact.
We can't work this out by ourselves.
We need to talk to each other to realise the ideal direction of travel.
Having a vision about how far we will go is fine, but it's essential to understand how soon we should get there.
Blog Post Number - 3630
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