Professional Courtesy: Waiting for Something Better by Dr. Thomas Giacobbi, DDS, FAGD

The release of the newest iPhone is always greeted with excitement, skepticism and some criticism. This is the reality of new technology—developing the newest thing requires a bit of a risk, because you’re charged with predicting the future. Apple and most of the world knows that wireless is everywhere, and yet there are people angry with the departure of a headphone jack.

I don’t remember people complaining this much when my home phone made the transition from a corded rotary-dial model to a cordless push-button one. There are self-driving cars logging millions of miles in an effort to remove our steering wheels—will that shift be more difficult than the headphone jack? Time will tell.

Dentistry is no stranger to technology. If that made you chuckle, then you may be one of the frustrated fans of technology who don’t think dentistry is innovating fast enough. The dental profession has long enjoyed a relative slow adoption of new technology, and there are good reasons for this delay. First, it’s expensive to adapt some technologies to a profession that’s faced with so many different regulations—FDA, HIPAA and others.

It’s also expensive to buy technology because so few dentists live on “the bleeding edge,” wanting to be the first on their block with the latest and greatest. And third, buying new technology that’s soon replaced by newer technology is very expensive for the dentist who bought the first generation. It isn’t long before you are waiting for version 2 or 3. With these issues in mind, I’d like to share a couple areas where I see opportunity.

Digital radiographs
I’ve had a “paperless” or “chartless” office for 10 years now, but there’s still no elegant way to send a patient’s records to another dental office. You want to send X-rays? You have to send a viewer, or .JPG files that the other dentist can import but not modify. I can’t begin to tell you the number of “copies” I’ve received that are useless. Digital X-rays have excellent market penetration, but sharing images is still a nightmare.

CAD/CAM technology
This wonderful technology is finally starting to become something you might use on every new patient, not just people receiving treatment.

I recently had a phone call from an implant patient who was traveling out of town and thought he broke his crown. (Turns out it just came off—darn implant cement!) I thought this was the golden opportunity to call the lab and ask it to mill me another one. Unfortunately, I discovered that these files are retained for only a limited amount of time before they’re discarded.

I can understand a situation like mine may only present itself once in a blue moon, but I would have been thrilled to be able to receive a new crown in the mail before the patient’s return flight hit the ground.

I’m not sure what the solution will be—perhaps we can get a copy of the file for these cases and store it in the patient’s chart, or the lab could offer a service where it would maintain a folder of your cases in their cloud storage for a small fee. Imagine having a scan of your patient’s complete dentition at their new patient exam, and sending the prep scan when you need to have a crown made.

Clinical notes
I can ask my iPhone for a weather report from across the room or ask Alexa to order a pizza, but my practice management software can’t take notes while I’m having a conversation with my patient. Far-fetched? Not really. There are voice-recognition programs out there today, but nothing I have seen is well-integrated into the practice management software.

What technology are you waiting for? Is there an innovation that dentistry needs to adopt? I’d love to read your comments to this article online. In the meantime, we can rest assured knowing we are in a “people profession” and that will probably never change. After all, do you know anybody looking for a self-drilling dentist?

My email is tom@dentaltown.com and on Twitter: @ddsTom.