Digital Smile Design + Align Technologies

Q&A:
Dr. Christian Coachman, Digital Smile Design founder

Digital Smile Design founder Dr. Christian Coachman and DentaltownUK honourary editor Dr. Elaine Halley discuss DSD’s recent collaboration with Align Technologies.

On Friday 9th March 2018 Dr Christian Coachman, (the Founder of the DSD concept) returned to London to talk to a packed audience of dentists.

He addressed the conference about a digital breakthrough in interdisciplinary dentistry which follows a recent announcement of a ‘facially driven’ treatment planning collaboration between Align Technology and Digital Smile Design which conjoins Invisalign clear aligner therapy with Smile Design Protocols. The intention of the speakers at this conference was to advise dentists on how to integrate Invisalign with restorative techniques more easily thanks to a streamlined workflow. The ultimate aim being to adopt a less invasive treatment approach. The conference detailed the Digital Smile Design and Invisalign workflow as well as highlighting how the iTero Element digital scanner can benefit dentists and patients when integrated into the restorative workflow.

DentaltownUK Honorary Editor Dr Elaine Halley was also speaking at the conference and took the opportunity to interview Dr Christian Coachman for DentaltownUK. The video of this interview can be found by clicking here.

Elaine Halley: Tell us about the collaboration between Digital Smile Design and Align Technology.

Christian Coachman:I think it’s a breakthrough—an amazing new step for inter-disciplinary digital dentistry. The connection is between what we are doing with DSD in terms of team communication, facial analysis, smile design principles, interdisciplinary simulations, and then connecting this digital interdisciplinary world with aligners. In the end it’s the patients who benefit the most.

EH: Is DSD accessible to all dentists? Do you need to be specially trained?

CC: Digital Smile Design has courses all over the world, but you don’t need any special training to use it. DSD is actually a tool—a service that allows dentists to bring this into their office without having to worry about learning or having to invest in technology.

It’s just a matter of understanding the philosophy behind it—and the philosophy is actually the philosophy of modern dentistry. There’s nothing new about how to diagnose a problem, how to solve it and how to perform the procedures to treat the patient. So it’s really for everybody—from general dentists to specialists, beginners to experienced dentists. Of course, we can talk a lot today about the business side of it—how you can market and promote yourself, how you can differentiate yourself with all of these strategies—but it definitely is for everybody, and anybody can start doing it tomorrow.

EH: Adult orthodontics is obviously a growing market. What advantages do you think treatment with aligners has over more traditional types of treatment?

CC: I’m going to start the lecture today saying that the better that I become as a smile designer, the more I see the need to move teeth. When we follow the basic principles—the classic principles of facially driven treatment planning—we start from this ideal projection and work backward into the treatment plan. It doesn’t matter if you’re a GDP or a specialist; you need to start from this ideal projection, then treatment plan the procedures to get as close to this ideal.

Every time you do this, orthodontics becomes very clear right in front of you. That means that moving teeth to facilitate a treatment is something vital. It is something that everybody—every single dentist—should utilize and should take advantage of it. One of the goals of the workflow is to visually help dentists to see the beauty of moving teeth. 

Click here to watch Dr. Elaine Halley’s full interview with Digital Smile Design founder Dr. Christian Coachman.

Q&A: Simon Beard, Align Technologies SVP and managing director

Align Technologies senior vice president and managing director Simon Beard and DentaltownUK honourary editor Dr. Elaine Halley discuss DSD’s recent collaboration with Align Technologies.

Elaine Halley: Why is today’s news important to Align Technologies?

Simon Beard: Creating this compatibility between the Invisalign and Digital Smile Design systems produces a seamless flow: ortho and restorative workflows. Ultimately, we’re creating this visualization for the patient, to make it easy to understand, and also easy for the clinician to explain.

EH: If I’m an Invisalign user as a dental practitioner in the UK, how easy is it to access this synergy?

SB: We’re at the early stages. The first thing is, you need to have an iTero Scanner because that’s where we are building a lot of the workflows. Once you have the scanning technology, you want to be able to access that technology now and also make good use of it in the future.

EH: Align is renowned for its brand within the dental world—Invisalign is the name they know when they think of clear aligners. Will the collaboration with Digital Smile Design build on that?

SB: We hope so, because DSD is a brand in itself, as well. When you take two well-known brands with great reputations, there are a lot of synergies. We live in a visual world; I think that anything we can do to increase that aspect of visualisation is going to help the Invisalign system.

EH: Does Align have any insight in the potential of the European marketplace? Is there a growing demand for this type of orthodontics from a consumer perspective?

SB: We’re looking at the ortho/restorative point of view, specifically. With our background in teeth straightening, we believe there are more than 100 million consumers who’d like to access technology that would make them improve their smile. The demand is already here, but we believe it is enormous.