Boosting communication through digital dentistry: Dr Elaine Halley and Ashley Byrne share their success.

They shared how digital dentistry has improved communication between practice and lab, boosted scan and restoration accuracy, and transformed patient experience.

Tell us how communication has changed since you brought in digital tools to your workflow?

Elaine: As dentists, we need to be able to deliver work that our patients are pleased with and that is predictable. One of the most important partnerships in making sure that happens is that communication piece between us and our dental technicians. I believe that can’t start early enough in the process.

Ashley: One of the problems with communication in a two dimensional world is I’ll receive a lab ticket, or a WhatsApp message, or an email, and it might come from the practice, or it might come from the dentist, it might be sent to my receptionist, or it might come to me, or it might come to my care team. Trying to piece all of that information together can be quite a challenge. The nice thing with digital is all of that comes into a singular point. Through the software, through the intraoral scanner, you can send images, you can send your notes, you can send x-rays, you can send video… everything that is encompassed within the case all comes through a central portal and appears directly in my software.

Has moving to digital improved integration with the technicians and the lab?

Elaine: Using a digital workflow means we’ve got a virtual patient, we’ve got the scan, we’ve got the STL file, and we can send that and get feedback back, or the technicians can share designs with us, we can even share those designs with the patient in certain cases. We can make sure that we’ve all come to a collaborative agreement before we even commit to any of the work. That all should be done at the beginning, because once we’re into a case the decisions have been made, the finances may have been agreed with the patient and then if something has to change it’s us that have to put that right, which is not ideal and causes a lot of stress.

Also, the ability to have your dental technician evaluate your preps, particularly in bigger cases where maybe you’re thinking about “Where should I finish the margin here?” “Is this ok?” It can be helpful to have your technician just cast their eye over your preps and all your paths of insertion and all those angles. Just to get another set of eyes on it, and be able to give you some suggestions about changes you could make. With digital this can be all seamlessly across a digital workflow rather than putting the patient into temps, sending them away and then getting that call from your lab saying you have to make alterations and change things.

And then, when we move into the actual restoration design, I think having that communication with the dental technician before we’re totally committed to the end of the case is very helpful. If you’ve got for instance teeth of different colours, so say you’re trying to mask a post in a tooth next to some veneers, making sure you’ve communicated with your dental technician the depth that they need to be able to mask out different colours is really helpful. For instance, the iTero™ NIRI technology (Near Infra-red Imaging) function on the iTero intraoral scanner gives the dental technician a lot of extra information about the structure of the teeth, and the high definition picture gives them the actual intraoral pictures that help to make those decisions about “how are we going to get these different coloured substrates to look the same in the final result?”

What would you say are some of the big difference between analog and digital workflows?

Elaine: I think with complex cases, another tool I’ve found really useful is being able to do the pre-treatment scan. So I might have the patient in temporaries, or it may just be their initial bite set up, but unlike in analog where you used to have to prep some of the teeth and then make a sectional bite and then prep the next section and make a sectional bite — where you had to really plan it out [and decide] how are you going to capture the prep to prep bite articulation, by using the digital workflow as long as we’ve set up the bite correctly in our temporaries or provisionals, we can scan that and do our preps and use that pre-op scan as the reference for the bite. And that’s much more accurate than the analog world.

The accuracy of fit isn’t an issue either — certainly not with single units, not with three unit bridges, and even with complex restorative cases going cross-arch, as long as you understand how to capture the soft tissue so that the overlaying of the scans is reproducible. The accuracy is absolutely there for that.

Ashley: With conventional dentistry, let’s say we go back a few years and we’re doing a wax-up. The difficulty I have is that we would use a stone model and we do a wax-up and then we send it in the post and dentist would look at it, and discuss it with the patient. There was always a risk of it getting damaged in the post, and then we would need to send it back to the lab for adjustment and that’s a challenge. So even a diagnostic wax-up, there can be three or four appointments which is an incredible waste of chair time.

With digital dentistry, a scan can come through, I can do my diagnostic wax-up and then I can share this directly to the clinician, the clinician can look at it even on an iPhone or on the software or computer, check that diagnostic wax-up, have a quick conversation with me… and we can then make any tweaks or adjustments. I send that straight back and actually then before we’ve done any preparation, any changes to the patient, any sort of committed work, we can have a very open conversation and share that information openly with the patient.

Has digital made a difference to patient experience?

Ashley: For patient experience, it’s a very very powerful tool. Seeing their 2D or 3D facial image and we can use a little slider to go back and forth and show them this is your ‘before’ and this is your ‘after’, and we can show how the tooth is being prepared.

I look back at the old way we used to do dentistry and I suppose I’m a little bit mortified! The new way of doing it really engages the patient into modern dentistry. It’s a really good tool, so never think of your intraoral scanner as solely an impression taker, because it’s something vastly more powerful than that. A good intraoral scanner really has the ability to revolutionize your practice.

Interested in seeing how iTero™ intraoral dental scanners can support your shift to digital dentistry? Get in touch with our sales representative to know more.

Authors:

Dr. Elaine Halley, General Dentist, MSc. (Aesthetic and Restorative Dentistry)

Ashley Byrne, Associate Director at Byrnes Dental Laboratory

The testimonials and statements in this article reflect individual experiences and may not be representative of all users. iTero™ is a medical device. Please refer to the Instructions for Use and consult your local regulatory guidance.