"I can't believe how much dental offices have evolved since I was a dental assistant 20 years ago", a client in the waiting room remarked.
Office administrators hear the good, the bad, and the ugly of almost everything in the dental community. This client was on point though; the advances in dental technology over the past two decades are in every sense, transformative.
Computational advances and artificial intelligence (AI) have revolutionized patient communication and office management strategies. As someone who has only worked with online dental software for charting, scheduling and communication, it's slightly unsettling to imagine just how complicated things must have been before these tools existed, and what used to happen in the days when paper registers ruled the administrative world.
I love myself a cute work notebook (mostly for doodling) but having to document every single patient’s appointment, payment history, and personal details by hand – I will gladly spare myself the pressure thereof. I can't help but smile thinking about the chaos that might have ensued if someone accidentally spilled coffee on the day’s schedule (a very real possibility). And, I have to give credit to the skilled pharmacists who managed to decipher handwritten prescriptions from dentists. The elegance of today’s software makes it seem like we’ve stepped into the future.
Today, we have made friends with our evolutionary allies – you guessed it… trees. Modern dental offices make a conscious effort to reduce the amount of paper waste; Everything is digitalized!
Patients can view a 3D video of their entire oral structure as a preliminary step for Invisalign. They can visualize the results through an Outcome Stimulator, an exciting feature that shows your future teeth in a realistic alignment after undergoing the orthodontic treatment. Other patients undergo a Cone Beam Computed Tomography (CBCT), another digital scan that reveals bone density - whether strong enough to support a dental implant as a permanent, and possibly better-looking replacement tooth, or fragile enough to signal potential future problems. Through Biofilm Management Technology, oral hygiene is a totally different experience. Instead of laying in the dental chair for 60 minutes of uncomfortable scuffing as the hygienist scrapes unwanted grime from teeth, latest hygiene technology particularly targets the harmful oral bacteria through air and water pressure, making the dental hygiene appointment a refreshing experience – no dental agony involved! Technology has made dental experiences effortless.
Needless to say, the future of dentistry looks incredibly promising. We now have software that sends patients automated email reminders for regular cleanings - sometimes perhaps a message too many.
But this technology makes it harder to skip out on dental care. On the diagnostic side, there’s even more excitement. iTero machines, for example, can already identify pressure points on tooth surfaces through detailed scans and digital imaging can identify the number of canals in a tooth. In the future, AI might be able to accurately take over tasks that once required a specialist’s eye and advanced microscopes, preventing unnecessary series of steps such as months long re-treatment of root canal procedures – ouch(those who know, know)!
We have come so far from what dental care used to be. Dentists from the past couldn’t have fathomed current technology, and just like that perhaps it is wise to not speculate what the futures holds in store for us and simply brace ourselves for a new augmented dental world...
Afaf K. Janjua
Communications Strategist
M.A., B.Sc.
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