Digital dentistry
My professional journey has always had a big focus in digital transformation in dentistry. My background education is a dental technician and I have been part of the digital processes that dental labs and clinics have been going through the recent years. Dental laboratories have actually had digital solutions for prosthetics now already more than 40 years. My own professional career started 14 years ago when dental laboratories in Finland started to make more use of computer aided design and manufacturing. I was working for a reseller that sold scanners and design software for dental laboratories in order to produce dental crowns and bridges digitally. At that time, it was not that common to have a CAD/CAM solution in the dental laboratory compared to the present where all labs have a system in their hands. There are actually already some labs in Finland that are totally digital meaning they are doing all their work with digital devices.
Nowadays almost all indications of dental prosthetics can be made digitally, and no one wants to go back to the analog way of working. Processes are more predictable, faster and more accurate than before. The use of in-house production with the help of 3D printers and milling units is a normal way of working right now. In-house production has enabled more faster delivery times and a big variety of materials that can be used to produce the restorations. In dental clinics digitalization means for example, taking a traditional impression of the patient’s teeth in a digital way with an intraoral scanner. The digital impression is only the beginning of the possibilities to create treatment for the patient for prosthetics, preventive care, orthodontics and much more. It is common in the digital dental clinic to create a digital patient by creating a database of all records in digital form. This can include digital impressions, CBCT images and face images all aligned together to get a total 3D view of the patient.
I can see that the digital way has improved tremendously all of the processes from all aspects. The benefits of the digital way can be felt from all parties of the entire treatment team, the patient, the dentist and the lab. In the future this development will continue, and the digital processes will evolve even further. There will be fewer dental professional and skilled dental technicians and dentists available in the future. Patients will still need to be treated efficiently, and digital ways can help he of help here. The digital way will also hopefully attract more young people to join the interesting world of dentistry.
Open society
I can see that in the future amongst dentistry AI and cloud platforms will be used in an expanding level. Parts of the dental work can be done anywhere in the world, and this creates some aspects that need to be carefully thought of. General Data Protection Regulation defines the use of personal data for EU citizens and applies to also organzations outside the EU that handle data of EU citizens. When handling data, for example in the cloud, personal data has to be handled under GDPR. Dental records are sensitive patient data, and all patient data needs to be taken seriously and all parties of society need to be aware and concerned of this. Everyone plays a role in keeping patient data secure. This includes the ones developing the digital systems, governments, legislators, the users of these systems and in the end also every one of us as patients. We all need to be awake and alert that the information we want to keep in private stays private in this all the time developing digital world.
The amount of data created in the digital world creates the dilemma of how to use the data in a secure and efficient way. This creates demanding decisions for governments to enable on the other hand the use of for example cloud platforms but on the other hand also efficient data security measures globally and nationally.
Chat GPT
I’ve asked ChatGPT What is digital dentistry and is cloud computing safe in digital dentistry. ChatGPT could answer pretty thoroughly on the topics. It could briefly explain the benefits and different areas involved in digital dentistry. About cloud computing safety I was happy to see a very good answer considering the most important points about cloud databases. I can see AI as a tool that can help us in going towards the right direction and in assisting personnel in dentistry. AI cannot replace all of the tasks and cannot make full decisions about patients, so in this we will always need human intervention and decision making to proof that AI can make the right consumptions. Any regular routine measures should definitely be made AI based as this can speed up the processes and, in some cases also make the decisions more accurate (especially if we need to process a big amount of data in order to make a decision). The good thing with AI is that it evolves and gets better all the time. Learning is never ending and that is the key to be understood also about AI. Right now, AI can answer quite good to the questions but a year later it will give a different answer based on what it has learned. In this we need a human moderator who can always stay on track about how accurate and reliable AI is.
Self-evaluation
I was quite familiar already with the topics for this assignment. I have not used ChatGPT that much, so it was nice to see how much it has evolved in the answers. I guess the evaluation of AI’s accuracy in information is a never-ending task. This requires us humans to step up our information and learnings because we always need to be the moderator for AI. I’m especially happy and proud that I’ve invested my time to learn more about all things digital and that I’ve decided to graduate in Master in Digital Health!