Industry News

Pacific Dental Services Foundation Provides $440,179 in Donated Dentistry in Ethiopia
The Pacific Dental Services Foundation, a charitable arm of Pacific Dental that’s committed to providing oral health care to those in need, traveled to the Tigray region of Ethiopia to provide comprehensive oral health care to patients in need in the communities of Mekelle and Hawzen.

From Sept. 13–21, members of the PDS Foundation, dentists and volunteers served alongside the Dental School at Mekelle University and the Relief Society of Tigray to provide dentistry for 555?patients.

Since its first service trip to Ethiopia in 2014, the PDS Foundation has served more than 11,000?patients and provided more than $7,100,000 in donated dentistry. According to the World Health Organization, it’s estimated that 71% of Ethiopians are affected by oral health-related illnesses. Clinicians and volunteers worked shoulder to shoulder with the Dental School at Mekelle University to provide coaching and training for their dental students. The clinicians provide patients with comprehensive oral health care, including cleanings, X-rays, scaling and root planing, restorations and extractions, if needed.

Delta Dental and Affiliates Announce New Treatment Service Through Virtudent
In its mission to advance oral health and wellness, Delta Dental of California and its affiliates announced a new treatment service to make it easy and convenient for customers to access diagnostic and preventive dental care to maintain better overall oral health.

Through Virtudent, a provider of on-premise, preventive dentistry services for employers, Delta Dental customers in select regions of New York, Pennsylvania and Texas will now have the opportunity to receive oral health care at their workplace.

The Virtudent offering brings the diagnostic and preventive services typically performed at a dentist’s office—including a complete oral health exam, cleaning and X-rays—right to the patient’s workplace. The new service is intended to help patients stay healthier and promote preventive oral health by reducing barriers to care and the possibility of more costly and time-consuming procedures in the future.

Dexis Titanium Sensor Now Integrated with Dentrix Ascend
KaVo Kerr recently announced that its latest digital intraoral sensor, Dexis Titanium, now integrates with the cloud-based practice management system Dentrix Ascend by Henry Schein One.

Clinicians can now use their existing Dentrix or Ascend imaging software with Dexis Titanium, which features an unconditional replacement warranty. The sensor also features Dexis PerfectSize shape and TrueComfort design, making it a comfortable, single-sized sensor solution for adult and child patients.

For more information about the integration, call 888-275-5286.

Jeffrey Miller Promoted to President and Chief Legal Officer of Western Dental
Western Dental has announced the promotion of Jeffrey L. Miller to president and chief legal officer.

Miller joined Western Dental in 2013 and, as executive vice president, general counsel and chief compliance officer, has been an active participant and leader on the executive team while overseeing the legal, compliance, human resources and public policy activities of the company.

Miller has been serving in leadership roles in health care organizations since 2005, when he joined DaVita, an international provider of dialysis care, where he was vice president, deputy general counsel and corporate secretary. In 2011, he joined Imaging Advantage, a radiology practice management company, as senior vice president, general counsel and chief compliance officer. Before his work as a corporate counsel, he practiced at a global law firm headquartered in Los Angeles, where he represented and advised public and private companies, including mergers, acquisitions and strategic transactions for hospital systems, pharmaceutical companies and other health care-related organizations.

He has a Juris Doctor degree from Georgetown University Law Center and a master’s degree in public health, with a concentration in health finance and management, from Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health. Miller also has a bachelor’s degree from Duke University.

Apteryx Imaging Partners with 4th-IR to Develop AI Solutions for Digital Imaging
Vancouver-based Apteryx Imaging announced that it has partnered with Lucerne, Switzerland-based 4th-IR to co-develop a suite of cloud-based artificial intelligence solutions for dental imaging.

By integrating machine and deep-learning technology into Apteryx’s software portfolio, coupled with plans to build a stand-alone service, dentists will soon have access to a suite of new products and features, including radiographic quality assurance, diagnostic decision support and enhanced specialist reporting.

Leveraging Apteryx’s repository of image data and its customer base and development capabilities, along with 4th-IR’s experience in AI and data science, the first product to be deployed later this year will be a digital radiography quality assurance service for Apteryx XVWeb customers. The cloud-based service will use computer vision to isolate, auto identify and report common errors related to X-ray image acquisition and imaging system health. Additional products targeting image feature recognition and clinical diagnostic decision support are in development and are targeted for deployment in 2020.

For more information, visit apteryx.com.

Bolton Cephalometric Standards Template System Now Digitally Available
The Bolton-Brush Growth Study Center, in cooperation with Motion View, announced the release of the Bolton Cephalometric Standards Template System in digital form for use in evaluating the skeletal, dental and orthodontic conditions of orthodontic patients.

The system is a collection of ideally proportioned cephalometric tracing templates based on age, nationality and gender, which eliminate the need for manually tracing cephalometric X-rays. Motion View will make a donation to the Bolton-Brush Growth Study Center for every purchase of the system.

The templates can overlay the lateral cephalometric X-ray, facial photo or facial scan of a patient to quickly compare the patient’s facial proportions with those of an “ideal” standard for the population group that most closely matches that of the patient. Using the system eliminates the need to train assistants in landmark recognition. Users obtain dental and skeletal diagnostic information including A-P incisors positions, incisors relationship to maxilla and mandible, A-P maxillary and mandibular skeletal positions, upper to lower face height proportions, and anterior and posterior jaw heights.

For more information, visit motionview3d.com.