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May 2009 | Dental Lab Products
Forward Trends: new directions

Photo: SOT/Getty Images

Outside in

Seeing opportunity, well-financed business forces move to consolidate their share of this fragmented market.

By Richard Palmer

The dental laboratory industry is witnessing the beginning of an industrial revolution already endemic to almost every other business sector worldwide from manufacturing and healthcare to finance and government. The transition from manual craftsmanship to digital workflow is recent history to many of these industries, but very much part of the present and future of dental technology.

Audiology automation

The CAMISHA (Computer-Aided Manufacturing of Individual Shells for Hearing Aids) process has greatly speeded, simplified, and automated hearing aid production. Working from a digitally scanned impression of the ear, the technician fits the electronics into the virtual design prior to the 3D printing of the shell from a UV-light-cured acrylic material in batches of up to 100 custom units.

Photos: Widex Hearing Aid Co.

What the next-generation business landscape will look like five or 10 years from now is uncertain. However, what is certain is that the transition to automated production has captured the interest of outside corporate entities who have been instrumental in the transformation of other industries. They bring with them alternative business strategies with roots in finance and economics. What these entrepreneurs see is a fragmented industry comprising an aging workforce and facing rapid integration of automated manufacturing. Seizing this lucrative opportunity, these outsiders are bringing new and progressive business models to dentistry that embrace industrial manufacturing principles and capitalist practices to bring direction to an evolving industry.

History lessons

A short look outside the microcosm of dentistry can teach us valuable lessons. Other healthcare industries have experienced the growing pains of industry-wide digitization and automation of production processes. In spite of a rocky transition, they not only survived, but thrived.

“What is happening in the dental industry holds similarities to what has already taken place in other fields, particularly the medical industry,” said Morten Brunvoll, Executive Chairman of Biodenta, a Swiss company that has developed CAD/CAM systems as part of an affiliation program to bring laboratories under a network umbrella. “The dental industry—the dental technicians and the laboratories—is one of the last industries that faces the facts of life that all other industries have met over the last 15-25 years.

“Now at a very late stage, it hits the dental industry. A lot of the manual work, or the down-and-dirty work, is going away and being replaced by machines. The technicians’ daily work rhythm is going to look different. They’ll spend more time in front of the screen doing design work and then use their competence in the final stage, which still needs their qualifications and know-how. The craftsmanship will not go away. It will just take other forms and will be expressed in other ways.”

The transition to automated production can be an extended evolutionary process, or it can come practically overnight. Though there isn’t the same degree of manual labor involved in creating prescription eyeglasses or hearing aids, the ophthalmology and audiology industries now thoroughly embrace their own digital production workflow.

According to Richard Cortez, MS, an audiologist with Widex Hearing Aid Co. Inc., a manufacturer based in Long Island City, N.Y., in just over five years, CAD/CAM technology has practically revolutionized the design and production of in-the-ear hearing aids. “It’s now become the standard in the industry, with 98% to 99% of custom shells being made using CAD/CAM technology,” he said. Cortez commented that when automated production technology first emerged in audiology, he predicted that by the end of that first year 10% of the company’s shells would be made with the CAD/CAM system. “After about six months, up to 40% of the shells were being made that way. And it’s just blossomed from there. Before, we had 100 people doing the job that less than 30 are doing today.”

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