Healthcare needs a trip to Mars by Mike Gow BDS (Gla) MFDS RCPS (Gla) MSc Hyp (Lon) PGCert (Edin), Editor, DentaltownUK magazine

I attended the Henry Schein Digital Symposium on 27th and 28th April along with around 450 delegates. Speakers included Rune Fisker, Sinead McEnhill, Colin Campbell, Adam Nulty and Josef Kunkela, as well as technicians Petr Hajny, Vicken Hatsakordzian, and many more.

‘Medical Futurist’ Dr Bertalan Meskó gave a Keynote presentation that was entertaining, educational and truly inspiring. Dr Meskó is a self-confessed “geek physician” with a PhD in genomics and is an acclaimed author. In his Sci-fi inspired presentation, he stated that ‘healthcare needs a trip to Mars’. He explained this by detailing how medical advancements would be needed to sustain human colonies on Mars, but that such advancements would push modern medicine into new and exciting territory here on Earth. He highlighted that within healthcare and dentistry technology should be embraced to be utilised by (rather than to replace) trained healthcare professionals.

Dr Meskó summarises the 8 greatest innovations for dental health as 1) Smart toothbrushes 2) Augmented Reality 3) Virtual Reality 4) Teledentistry 5) CAD Dentistry and 3D printing 6) Intra oral cameras 7) Dental regeneration 8) CRISPR. Find out more about Dr Meskó’s thoughts on these at The Medical Futurist.

It certainly struck a note with me when he mentioned that the way we work with patients has already and will continue to change with regards to technology and online access to information. He cited advanced technologies that are already in use in modern medicine and also ones on the brink of breaking through. Patients increasingly have access to technologies for self-assessment and he advised that healthcare professionals embrace these. He also explained that research is advancing at a rapid rate with the existing 30 million PubMed articles growing by around 3 million each year. While people must be cautious with regards to the accuracy of the information that they access online, we must accept that they will use it to research their own symptoms and treatment options prior to visiting us. It is our responsibility to encourage patients to gain access to the correct information to enable fully informed consent however we must ensure that a) we ourselves keep up to date with what the patients are reading online and b) that we can then appropriately advise on the validity.

It was a real pleasure to interview speaker Dr. Alif Moosajee at the Symposium and talk with him about his use of digital dentistry, especially for guided implant cases. Dr Moosajee is the owner of Leicester-based dental Practice ‘Oakdale Dental’ and author of the book ‘The Smiling Dentist’.

The book (for which profits go to Bridge to Aid Charity) is aimed at members of the public and gives ‘secrets from a top dentist on how to keep your smile looking younger and healthier for longer’.

Click to watch the interview