Wish List with Simon Chard

I qualified in 2012 from King's College London Dental Institute. The British Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry helped to shape my early formative years as a dentist and I quickly found myself exposed to all of the latest advances in dentistry.

Straight out of VT training I found myself in a high-end private practice, I was handed a Cerec Omnicam and told 'This is what you will be using for your crown and bridge.' At this point (four years ago) the digital revolution had not really begun.

Cerec didn't have the best reputation with most people; however, I saw the potential in this amazing technology and started pushing the boundaries of what was feasible with the system.

Since then I have embraced everything digital, pushing the Cerec machine to the most of its capabilities, including digital restorative, orthodontic and implant dentistry. I now train dentists just coming into digital dentistry on how to make the most of the exciting new developments in this field.

My parents have owned the same fantastically successful clinic in Staines-Upon-Thames, Middlesex, for the past 30 years, growing it from a single-surgery to a five-surgery practice. When I first suggested bringing this technology into the practice they were skeptical, but have since embraced the technology. My wife, Meghan, and I are now in the process of taking over this practice and bringing it even further into the future of dentistry.

Other than digital dentistry my other big dental passion is digital photography. I really believe that photography is the main pillar of modern cosmetic dentistry and I couldn't really work without mine now.

The integration of digital photography and digital intraoral scanners through softwares such as Digital Smile Design is something that is exciting to me at the moment.

So moving forward, if money were no object I would continue to invest in these two passions of digital dentistry and photography. My current camera setup is a Canon 70D with twin flash Canon setup and Lumiquest bouncers.

In an ideal world I would like to upgrade this camera to a full-frame camera such as the 5D Mark III. I would also like to set up a full photography studio with softbox lighting, because these photos and videos look really beautiful.

Progressing with digital dentistry I would like to make two main investments: Sirona SL 3-D CBCT scanner and the FormLabs Form2 3-D printer. In the past year I have started placing dental implants after restoring them for many years, most recently using my Cerec Omnicam.

I am a massive fan of restoratively driven implant placement; the idea of merging an digital impression (STL file) from my Cerec Omnicam and a CBCT scan (Dicom file) to plan the position of the final crown and thus accurate surgical position of implant appeals to me.

If I could then 3-D print this guide in-house, that is a really exciting workflow. 3-D printing has become far more cost-effective and FormLabs is really leading the way with desktop printers.

My plan is to also use open-source software such as Meshmixer in combination with a Cerec scans to create digital wax-ups which I could also print in-house using the Form2 for trial smiles and to guide cosmetic bonding cases.