Dentalcompare
Clinical Director
Digital dentistry continues to march forward at an amazing rate. My business partner often jokes that there will be a point that we can do our jobs without even getting out of bed in the morning. All we have to do is design our CAD/CAM in-office crowns and read cone beam scans from a laptop while we sip coffee and watch the Today Show. All we need is a robotic handpiece from KaVo that can create our crown preparations remotely. Obviously this creates a rather anti-social environment, but its hard not to be impressed with where things have been going.
Sirona is one company that has been throwing a ton of effort toward the digital side of things, culminating in this weeks release of their CEREC inLab Software version 4.0. Like the in-office version, it is a complete rebuild of the previous version. The most significant feature in my opinion is the ability to design multiple restorations at a time. They can be different types of materials, different types of restorations such as veneers, crowns, or bridges, and you can work in opposing arches. You can see at the heart of the workflow that their goal is to someday truly remove the need for a physical model. Considering the success of iTunes over compact discs, it's not a bad business model.