Aligners
Orthosnap claims greatest accuracy and clearest material in the aligner tray space. They show shortened treatment times from their own trials. Treatment planning software included too.
Invisalign is a proper noun. It’s hard to imagine the brand will be dislodged from popular culture for some time. For example, my children’s orthodontist seems to be doing very well using Invisalign (and brackets as a backup). That being said, the Align Technology stock price has come back down to pre-pandemic levels.
It’s really hard to have success twice. Align Technology has expanded it’s capabilities with acquisition of iTero & exocad. Can they add another lane outside of orthodontics?
Regenerative
Waste not want not. Tooth Transformer is an Italian company that enables extracted teeth to be reused as a regenerative material. The transformer is a desktop machine.
Intraoral Scanners
Here are the systems that caught our attention, in order of price (ascending).
Runyes 3DS
Shining 3D
Medit i600
iTero (Cart)
Practice Management Software
There was a lot of it, at all price points. New companies keep appearing! This space will remain fragmented, but driven by trends in DSO acquisitions. DSOs could apply pressure on vendors for interoperability and electronic health records.
Artificial Intelligence
Here is the one area where the dental industry leads all others. While most consumers learned about AI with the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, the dental industry has been adopting AI tools for over a decade.
Carries detection is making inroads at dental practices, driven by DSOs (see above!) Restorative design is also having it’s AI moment, most noticeably 3Shape Automate service. Marketing tools like chatbots and patient retention systems are increasingly being driven by AI.
What else can AI handle in the digital dentistry workflow? Tell us about it in the comments!