Technology

Well known author and expert on relationships, Alan Cohen, said, “In our culture, presence in many relationships has been reduced to a trickle. In our fascination with labor-saving devices, mass production, lightening speed dental technology and unprecedented busyness, the human factor is often relegated to a low priority.

Digitalization in the dental office can add to-not take away from-your focused attention on quality dental care and excellent “people care.” The third installment to Dental Products Report's Paperless Video Series breaks down the top three ways a paperless system can enhance the dental patient's experience.  

This week's episode of DPR Friday features Dr. Leonard Hess's column on preventing clinical failures. Getting it right the first time is just one of the Dawson Academy team member's tips. The three major forms of failure that Dr. Hess will explain are bacteria, force management and esthetics and patient comfort.

Fifteen new dental products debuted on www.dentalproductsreport.com for the week of July 16, 2012. The products categories represented by these newcomers range from digital radiography and technology to equipment and infection control.

Here’s a rundown of the topics visitors to http://dlpmagazine.comdlpmagazine.com have been searching for this past week along with a few of the top links those searchs have led them to. 1. CAM

In light of the July 1 launch of XPsquared- an online community for dental professionals and the companies that serve them-we spoke with Managing Director Bill Martin, to see where this new offering fits into the wider landscape of trade shows and CE opportunities in the dental field.  

It is 1962 and Dr. Jones has an air compressor installed with air lines to all the treatment rooms running to units with highspeed air turbine handpieces, yet he continues to use the old belt driven dental drill because he just doesn’t trust the new system. That seems silly today, but it is the same situation many dentists find themselves in 50 years later with regards to paperless dental records.

A-dec has been awarded the 2012 Silver International Design Excellence Award (IDEA) for Medical & Scientific Products.

Jim Tobolski had been looking for the right dentist for some time but just hadn’t “latched onto one.” That is before he started visiting Dr. Edmond Suh’s Supremia Dentistry in Wake Forest, N.C. When Jim first stepped foot inside the practice, he liked the atmosphere, the look and the friendly staff. But when he had his first crowns put in using Dr. Suh’s E4D Dentist System, he was blown away.

This week's episode of DPR Friday brings you an inside look at a few of the Pride Institute "Best of Class" honorees. This feature will appear each month leading up to the ADA Annual Session, allowing the technology panel to explain why they chose this year's winners.

According to Dr. John Flucke, DPR Technology Editor, the process of digital radiography is simple, reliable and provides images that are nothing short of amazing. At this point in time if you’re still using film, the long shadow of Father Time is gaining on you… faster than you can probably imagine. To put it succinctly, digital radiography is no longer a matter of “if,” it’s a matter of “when."

As a full time general dentist, as well as a practice management coach and consultant, CAD/CAM technology is a subject that has been of significant interest to me. I incorporated CAD/CAM into my practice more than 10 years ago, and have been a proponent of the technology and its efficiency ever since.

Whatever your practice goals may be, the platform that is built to grow upon is key to success. Practices are bought and sold quite often, but it is every practitioner’s dream to build their own. When dentists get to build their own practice the right way using modern equipment and materials, their future plans will be much better served. The same is true for their computer system and their future technology goals, which includes going to a paperless office by 2014.

Next time you walk into your dental office, pretend you’re a new patient. If you’re greeted by a wall of paper charts and a reception area featuring a sliding glass window and a clipboard, think about what you are communicating. Impersonal reception areas, clipboards and paper charts scream “yesterday.” Now consider that, rightly or wrongly, patients form beliefs about the quality of your dentistry based upon these seemingly innocuous things.

You’ve been thinking about adding new technologies to your practice, maybe a laser or chairside CAD/CAM, but you just haven’t made the move. You like the idea of it, but you’re just not sure it’s worth the investment.

You don’t want to be the first. While there are no documented cases of a clinician acquiring a disease from laser plume, the possibility is there. That’s why it’s so important for you to wear the proper mask when using a laser.

Biographer Walter Isaacson outlined core leadership strengths that can be used to characterize Apple founder and personal computing pioneer Steve Jobs in a Harvard Business Review article. These four approaches to leadership can be applied to the improvement of your dental practice. ExecTech, a practice management consulting firm, breaks them down. Focus

DMG America President George Wolfe talks Icon and Luxatemp Ultra dental products.  

Stem cells in general are not a new concept. They’ve been included in medical journals for about 100 years and the definition of stem cells is just about as old-undifferentiated cells that not only have the capacity for self-renewal, but also the ability to produce specific cells needed for a wide range of tissue regeneration and therapeutic applications.

In the field of laser dentistry, patients and dentists are seeing benefits associated with the advancements in laser technology. Soft-tissue lasers cause far less patient discomfort with the ability to achieve simultaneous cutting and coagulation. The Food and Drug Administration has cleared the use of dental lasers in more than 20 dental procedures.

As dental practice marketing completely transforms from the simplicity of running a few ads in the Yellow Pages to the complexity of updating your website and regularly contributing to social media, photographs are becoming more and more important to your practice.

Dr. Peter Dawson’s CV is formidable. To look at all he’s achieved-the textbooks, the international recognition, the patients’ lives changed-it is easy to look at his career and assume that it is his story, exciting to listen to but impossible to emulate. But one of the greatest parts of the Dawson story is his commitment to making it accessible to the masses, to helping general dentists be better and see incredible results in their own practices.

Entering into its fourth cycle of honorees, you could say the Pride Institute “Best of Class” Technology Award is entering its senior year-with all the enthusiasm, maturity and eagerness to make its mark in the world that metaphor suggests.

Google Places is out. The search engine giant announced Wednesday that it has updated its local search platform with Google Plus Local, which will interface with Zagat, in efforts to encourage interaction on their social network Google+.

The DPR Technology Census has been a cornerstone of the DPR Editorial Calendar for a number of years. Part of what makes the tech census a must-read year after year is the fact that it helps dentists benchmark themselves. It's not always about what technology is available, but who is using it, who plans to use it, and what barriers to entry exist.

Internet use worldwide is continually expanding as more social media sites pop up, and companies continue to expand their presence on the Web. Smartphones are getting smarter, and many people have opted to purchase tablets such as the iPad, all of which allow instant access to the Internet and a universe of Web-based apps. This activity creates opportunities but can create a multitude of challenges for those who have websites.

A sophisticated panoramic and cephalometric digital imager that incorporates Morphology Recognition Technology (MRT) to automatically identify patient size and all parameters for correct exposure, the Hyperion X7 eliminates the need to manually calculate exposure settings or select patient arch size.

In this CDA 2012 video interview, Laurel Lubin from Henry Schein Practice Solutions talks about the latest release from Dentrix, the Dentrix G5 practice management software. "G5 brings improved efficiency and enhanced security," said Lubin. "We are very excited about a new partner program that we have created. It will allow third-party vendors to have integrated tools to create G5-friendly software."

America undeniably loves the Internet. More than 180 million Americans use the Internet at least once a month. Close to 80 percent of Americans use the Internet to search for health information, and among them, 54 percent specifically look for healthcare providers. Given these statistics, it’s no surprise that there are over 11 million Internet searches for dentists within a given month. 1. Your Practice is Open to the World 24/7, 365 Days a Year

The technologies you use in your personal life can benefit your professional life as well. We have talked with dental professionals who have already put the latest technologies to work in their practices.