We hear from Dentsply’s Max Milz about the digitalisation of dentistry and why it can help to simplify and future-proof your dentistry.
My name is Max Milz and I am responsible for the equipment and software business at Dentsply Sirona. That covers CEREC, 3D printing, CBCT, intraoral scanners, treatment centres, our software platform DS Core, and things like Sidexis and all the other software that Dentsply Sirona is offering to the market.
I think that the single biggest challenge that I hear from dental practitioners is actually related to staff. Finding sufficient staff, finding competent staff, making sure you can deploy them efficiently, making sure that you use the dentist’s time most effectively, and also making sure that tasks can be delegated.
It’s the single biggest cost block of a dental practice. Around 40% to 50% of the cost of a dental practice is people. When we think about digital dentistry, it’s about getting more out of the staff’s time and it’s about efficiency.
We all know how much time gets lost entering data from one system to another, or just packing stuff, following up on things, or bringing different data sources together. The point is: how do you leverage the most valuable thing you have? That’s the dentist’s time and the staff’s time.
What is DS Core?
DS Core is a cloud-based platform that we’ve developed to really connect all of our equipment and all of our workflows together.
If you think about cloud technology, you have to think about it not only as software, but as software with a supercomputer in the background.
For us, it’s basically bringing our technology into the next generation, making it future-proof and simplifying digitalisation and IT in a dental practice.
Over time, what this cloud platform does is replace the need for PCs, for servers, software upgrades, and so forth, as all the data and the computing power lives in the cloud. Hence, it dramatically simplifies the amount of time that you spend on bringing all the different pieces together, because everything is in one system.
Advantages
I think the biggest advantage is time savings. If I talk for example to implant dentists, sometimes they tell me that an assistant will take 20 to 30 minutes to bring all the relevant files together, so that you can share them with another practice to then – maybe just do the restorative part of it.
The other advantage is about future-proofing your equipment, and also your software, because you don’t have to run updates anymore as they’re running in the background. Ultimately, it’s about making it easier to integrate new procedures into your practice.
There’s always a bit of scepticism towards new technology. It is also a different thing in the sense that it grows all the time. I think we’re all used to a new technology coming out and it having all the functions that you could ever think about.
This is a platform that evolves over time. We see it started early on with early adopters, and then as more functions came online, the adoption curve went up. Since IDS, it has really picked up a lot. We already have several thousand practices and labs connected with it. We are very happy with where it’s going.
Lean in early
I think there’s always the phase of excitement and scepticism, early adopters and later adopters. But I think the key thing is that a cloud-based software is a continuous evolving platform, which will be further developed by the feedback of the users.
If you want it to become most relevant for yourself, you have to lean in early!
DS Core Care is really about equipment service. It’s about giving you peace of mind because you know that any issue will be repaired in the fastest possible way as you have your devices registered. It’s really about equipment service.
That’s why it’s called ‘care’. It is about caring for the equipment. For us, that’s at the moment CAD/CAM, such as mills, printers, scanners.
DS Core Create is a design service. We noticed that one of the barriers to chairside manufacturing is that a lot of dentists feel weary or uncomfortable designing things themselves – hence, the create service will make designs for your printer.
Instead of you designing an icon yourself, you go into DS Core, send a scan to us and we’ll send you a design back.
After that, all you have to do is press ‘print’. The step of actually designing things with software disappears. We believe that it’s really attractive for people who would like to have a printer in their practice, but who don’t want to learn how to play around with CAD/CAM software.
Excitement around 3D printing
We are very excited about 3D printing. We think it’s a really tremendous technology that brings a lot of benefits to a practice, and it’s a little bit like you have two supporting legs, if you’re doing in-house manufacturing.
The mill is really great for restoration. When you need permanence and durability, as you don’t want to put a new crown into your patient’s mouth every couple of years but instead you want it to last for 10 years plus, you need a high-durability material.
That’s why you have prefabricated ceramics, which is what mills are really great for. This type of manufacturing has downsides in comparison to 3D printing – 3D printing gives you a lot more degrees of freedom in terms of what you can design.
The magic lies in the materials and the resins that you need in order to make a final piece – whether it’s a night guard, a splint or a temporary restoration.
But this flexibility comes with the downside of lower strength of materials, which ultimately means lower durability. Therefore, printing is great for temporary applications.
Simplifying dental care
I think it’s exciting that people are trying to push the boundaries. When we look at printing ceramics, what people are actually printing is a composite. It’s a resin with a certain amount of ceramic content, but it’s still a resin, it’s still a composite.
I think our vision is really to simplify dental care with the tools of digitalisation. Today, we talk a lot about digital dentistry.
I think five years from now, we’re just going to talk about dentistry, because digital is an underlying tool, and we just want to make it simpler for people to use.
People don’t become dentists because they want to play around with software, or because they want to deal with IT problems. People become dentists because they want to take care of oral health problems.
Hence for us, it’s really about liberating the users with the tools that digitalisation provides so that they can focus on what’s most valuable and most interesting – and that’s improving patient’s oral health care.
For more information visit www.dentsplysirona.com.
