Digital dentistry is a hot topic in town. It is not a brand new concept, yet poorly understood and poorly implemented by practicing clinicians as well as dental technologists. Let us shed some light on past, present and potential future of digital dentistry.
Digital Dentistry is the use of advances in digital technology in clinical and laboratory dentistry. It replaces many analog procedures and practices, making the practice of dentistry more efficient. As with anything digital, digital dentistry involves the use of computers to a certain extent. In turn, it eliminates the need for certain time consuming and human-intensive processes. According to NorthPointe Family, the Dental use of digital dentistry in regular practice eliminates human error. While it is very true, improper use of ever developing digital dentistry tools and methods may lead to costly consequences. While it is great to discuss the merits of digital dentistry in clinical and laboratory settings, we can understand how it came to be by looking through the timeline of the development of digital dentistry.
In 1973 French Dentistry Professor Francois Duret invented first Computer-Aided Design and Manufacturing Technology (CAD/CAM). Over 15 years he refined it to the point where he could capture digital impression – the optical three-dimensional image of the tooth prep and adjacent teeth, design a crown and manufacture it with computer-controlled machinery in the same visit. In essence, He was the one who first introduced digital impressions, crown, and bridge design software and computer-aided manufacturing. Below is a video from 1988, which briefly talks about Dr. Duret's invention.
In March of 2013, IDT (Inside Dental Technology) Journal can conversation with Dr. Duret about the past, present, and future of digital dentistry. You can read full text of the interview here.
With more and more integration of computer technologies in different industries in the '90s dentists began implementing electronic scheduling and later electronic patient records, according to Dentaleconomics. Nevertheless, implementing digital dentistry in the clinical part of the practice was very slow and limited. It was much later when finally dentists started implementing digital diagnostic tools such as digital X-rays, digital impressions and Cone Beam Computer Tomography also known as CBCT.
Around the 2000s alongside with affordable computers in the market, CAD/CAM technology started to be implemented in dentistry. As time went on, although CAD/CAM was intended to be implemented everywhere in dentistry, the de facto division of CAD/CAM technology within dentistry started to emerge. While technologies such as Cerec offered chairside scanning, design, and manufacturing that supposedly was going to cut dental prostheses manufacturing time and cost, the dental laboratory segment started to integrate separate – more technologically sophisticated CAD/CAM software and hardware.
One of the pioneers of CAD/CAM dentistry is Enrico Steger – founder and current leader of Zirkonzahn Slr of South Tyrol, Italy. Thanks to his brilliant ideas and inventions Zirkonzahn who holds 12 international patents provides one of the top CAD/CAM Dentistry software and hardware. You can find out how we use Zirkonzahn CAD/CAM System in our lab here.
With more and more integration of computers into the personal and professional lives of everyone, it is hard to imagine dentistry without the use of digital technologies. Where we go from here? It can be anything, more refined autonomous intraoral scanners, and dentist controlled intraoral robots to do teeth preparation or autonomous dental implant robot as seen below
Let us know what do you think about the future of digital dentistry in the comments section.