Where “We” Are – Part 3

Once the diagnosis is complete and co-discovery has led to a collaborated CarePlan, its time to “Get it Done.”

Over the past decade, the new frontier of digital advances has been in clinical dentistry.  While analog solutions like articulating paper, impression materials, cold steel syringes and more are still in use, here are just a few of the digital devices that have advanced dental care.  (For more information, feel free to click on the links)

In the restorative realm, some of the most significant innovations have been:

• Digital Occlusal Analysis (T-Scan, Myotronics, BioResearch)
• Digital Impression Technologies (Itero, Midmark, etc.)
• CAD/CAM units (Cerec and E4D)

Additional advances in clinical care that incorporate high tech with a high touch approach include:

• Digitally Enhanced Orthodontics (SureSmile, Invisalign, 6 Month Smiles)
• Implant Placement (numerous CBCT machines)

Areas where we see great promise in elevating and coordinating care between the primary care team, specialists and labs are online sharing and collaboration. We will share more in future posts, we encourage you to look into the following:

• Secure Records Sharing (eDossea)

This move to digital has also enabled dental offices to be more closely integrated with specialists and labs. These improved communications enhance the “Point of Care” approach.

While there are many other digital devices with many more to come, these innovations have advanced the state of dental care delivery replacing analog approaches.

We see the levels of communication and documentation regarding care expand significantly.  The full integration of digital text, data, graphics, audio, and video into a multimedia EDR, is the culmination of these technologies.

The ability to have the right information in the right place at the right time will significantly facilitate decision-making and elevate care and caring.

Next, we share with you our Rx for the approach that best supports the Point of Care model.

After 20 years of experience, testing, and evaluation, we have chosen the best platform to build the next generation solution for the “Point of Care” model.

On the Windows® platform, you have a plethora of dental software choices. However, the Windows® platform does not handle multimedia smoothly, especially voice and video. The Apple Mac OsX operating system platform is robust enough to incorporate multimedia electronic dental records (EDR).

Critical criteria in choosing the right technology for your practice should be:

• Simple, Reliable, High Performance, Seamless and Transparent

Ease of use is essential for the adoption and integration of any technology into your practice. The technology must become seamless and transparent to your workflow. Once you begin to integrate digital technology into your workflow fully, it needs to be highly reliable. Finally, if the technology is properly developed, the simplicity of use at the interface is complimented by high performance and rich multimedia elements of the technology.

• Digital, not Molecular (paper)

Who has the paper chart? vs. Information at your Fingertips™ (digital). Stop wasting time filing and finding records. Instead, expand the quality of your records with a comprehensive digital record system.

• Point of Care Driven not Front Desk Driven

Restructure the ineffective segmented structure of traditional systems with a treatment room based system. Eliminate confusion and duplication of effort by documenting everything once at the point of care.

• Fault-tolerant Architecture

With the evolution of dental computing to a full digital record system, including an appointment book, the tangibility and perceived security of paper and film are lost. With electronic storage on a computer hard drive, we must move to a higher level of protection from loss or system failure. Redundancy of the system must be incorporated into a well-designed system.

• High Return on Investment (ROI)

The investment of time, effort, and money in technology resources should yield outcomes such as improved quality of care, enhanced services, greater output with less effort and increased profitability.

 One of the most exciting and yet perplexing input options for the computer has been natural language voice command and dictation. Over the years, we have tried multiple options on the Windows® platform with disappointing results.  

 On the Apple platform, your PMS choices are limited, but the great news is you have two excellent options. While both options have equaled and surpassed the capabilities of the best of the Windows genre, your choice comes down to some distinguishing differences.

 The primary difference between these two great choices is the location of your data. Would you prefer computing in the cloud or keeping everything in-house?

 Curvedental® is cloud-based, so your data and the applications do not reside locally.  The curvedental® team has created a real breakthrough application for dentistry with a PMS, patient education, and imaging solution on the web. For many, this is a godsend when it comes to updates and data backup. The two major issues many have are the reliability of your high bandwidth internet connection and the potential of unauthorized access to your data.

We will delve into these issues and more in a series on curvedental®. We recommend you review Dr. Marty Jablow’s blog post. Marty also conducted a webinar on DentalTown in 2009 that is worth your time (scroll down to the bottom of the page).

If you prefer a native in-house system, MacPractice is an excellent forward-thinking system. Mark Hollis, Patrick Clyne, and their team have continuously built the most advanced solution on the Apple platform since 2004. For 20 years prior Patrick developed medical and dental software for the Apple platform. The years of experience are evident in the comprehensive approach and capabilities of this excellent solution.

In future posts, we will focus on the pros and cons of each of these best in class solutions in depth. We will also share our approach to building the optimized hardware infrastructure to create a multimedia iS/iT system for your practice. At any point, if you have burning questions, please post them with the Contact Form.

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