“Because RV is used to relax the patient and reduce pain,” says Lappage, “the dentist sees the patient’s eyes as an empathy.”
RV is also used in training to allow dental students to digitally experience dental procedures, Lappage says. This is especially useful for emerging problems that rarely occur but require specific experience to deal with.
Aids to artificial intelligence in diagnosis
As noted in Dentistry today, Artificial intelligence tools are now more consistent than dentists in diagnosing caries from peripheral and peripheral x-rays, which makes sense: artificial intelligence algorithms are trained by billions of data points to make decisions based on available evidence, giving them an advantage over humans when it comes to identifying specific conditions.
“There is a real use case for AI in the discovery of abnormal structures, the determination of diagnoses, and the suggestion of treatments,” says Lappage. “In the end, dentists are human. AI acts as a pair of eyes more validating their results. “
MORE THAN HEALTHTECH: How can artificial intelligence improve patient outcomes?
Privacy issues can be a problem, Lappage says. “The big challenge of AI is that we have to sow the engine with real data of the patient. Many healthcare artificial intelligence applications have difficulty with complete misidentification of data: by reintroducing data, it may be possible to re-identify people. Internships must ensure that people cannot identify with artificial intelligence tools. ”
Still, Lappage sees an expanding use case for AI in both clinical decision making and dental education. Armed with anonymous dental data, these tools can help improve the accuracy of clinical treatment plans before performing irreversible procedures and generating templates that students can use in the analysis of dental treatment.
3D printing is cost effective for patients and professionals
The advent of low-cost, high-speed 3D printers makes it possible for dental practices to reduce total expenses and improve overall patient satisfaction.
Lappage points to the use of dental implants: “If we look at dental implants, it could cost about $ 100,000 to build a lab for manufacturing,” he says. “A first-class 3D printer, meanwhile, costs about $ 20,000. By reducing the cost of manufacturing this tooth, we reduce the price for the patient.
Other applications for 3D printing in dentistry include medical modeling and dental splints. According to a recent one Nature article, cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) data from the patient’s dental structures are now available for dental practice and can be used to create a volumetric image, which is then used to create a 3D model of the patient’s jaws. This model can be used to assess the impact of treatments or to plan specific surgical interventions.
Meanwhile, 3D printing offers a faster and cheaper way to create dental splints, which are used to prevent teeth from breaking. Until recently, broken splints meant the slow and costly creation of replacements. Now, new splints can be created in just over an hour.
Dental technology provides safety considerations
While new dental technologies offer benefits such as increased ease of access, reduced patient stress, improved diagnostic accuracy, and lower material costs, Lappage notes that “the more we use these technologies, the more rich is the information we have. As a result, the value of health records increases and the number of ransomware and fishing attacks against dentists increases. ”In one case, a dental consultation lost nearly $ 60,000 in three days after operations paralyzed a data breach.
To help limit security risk and improve patient confidence, Lappage suggests prioritizing privacy over design. In practice, this means building security controls and access to digital data before sharing it between health services or partners to ensure that, if attacks occur, the possibility of data breach is substantially reduced.
Bottom line? New technologies are transforming dental practices, generating industry-wide benefits for both patients and providers.