Digital Workflow in Dentistry

What does a 3D printer do at the orthodontist, and what is Dental Monitoring? Find out how you as a patient benefit from the digital workflow at your orthodontist.

Digital Workflow in Dentistry – Orthodontics with a Digital Process

In recent years, digitalization has increasingly taken hold in dentistry as well - and with great success.

The digital workflow in dentistry simplifies various treatment processes. Digital procedures also conserve materials and resources. Find out here how you as a patient benefit from digitalization in dentistry, and in particular from the digital workflow in our practice!

How you benefit from the digital workflow in dentistry

How the impression with an intraoral scanner works

Digital treatment plan at your orthodontist

3D printer - fabrication directly in your orthodontic practice

Fully digital workflow at the orthodontist

Dental Monitoring

How You Benefit from the Digital Workflow in Dentistry at Your Orthodontist

We would like to tell you which digital options we use in our orthodontic practice and what advantages the digital workflow brings for you as a patient:

Digital Communication

Digitalizing the first point of contact and the medical history, as well as virtual consultations on request, give you more flexibility along with high-quality treatment support. This means you do not have to come into the practice for every question. We make every step of your treatment easier from the very beginning.

Digital Diagnostics

Digitalization in dental diagnostics has made very great progress in recent years. Digital X-rays, for example, offer a considerably lower radiation exposure for patients and staff than conventional X-rays, and deliver faster results with better image quality. Thanks to the high resolution, even small problems in the jaw or the teeth can be identified more easily and diagnosed reliably. When needed, X-ray images in digital form can be shared easily and archived in a space-saving way - which saves time and money and protects the environment.

Digital Impressions at Your Orthodontist

To obtain precise 3D models of the teeth and the oral cavity, it used to be necessary in the orthodontic practice to take impressions with an impression tray and a special paste (impression material). Many patients find the associated feeling of pressure very unpleasant and/or develop a gag reflex.

Here, too, digitalization has made great progress, so that a conventional impression is generally no longer necessary. Instead, the impression is now taken purely digitally, which is an advantage in several respects at once.

How the Impression with an Intraoral Scanner Works

Intraoral scanners can capture the position of the teeth almost without any contact. To do so, they use a small digital camera, in some cases about the size of an electric toothbrush. It can scan the entire oral cavity and derive a highly detailed 3D model from it. With this modern technology, creating such a digital impression of the dentition takes only a few minutes and is considerably more comfortable for patients, as taking the impression causes neither a feeling of pressure nor a gag reflex. Beyond that, the intraoral scanner offers further advantages: no consumables are used (e.g. impression material), which is good news for your wallet and the environment alike.

Digital Treatment Planning at Your Orthodontist

Another advance is digital treatment planning. The data collected during the preliminary examinations can now be brought together digitally and used for individual treatment planning. In this way, we can simulate the entire course of treatment digitally in our orthodontic practice. This lets you see on screen in advance what results you can expect from the respective treatment. Based on the patient data submitted, we can design a suitable 3D model directly in the practice, which helps us with the placement of brackets or the use of aligners, for example. With this step toward digitalization, we achieve precise results. The treatment time can also be shortened through forward-looking planning and precise monitoring of the treatment progress.

3D Printer – Fabrication Directly in Your Orthodontic Practice

On the basis of the digital 3D scans, 3D printers can create precise physical models of the teeth and jaw. These usually serve as the basis for planning and producing orthodontic appliances, but they can also be used to visualize the course of treatment.

Your advantage: certain treatment appliances are produced directly in our orthodontic practice, so there is no longer a longer waiting time as there would be with fabrication by a laboratory.

Custom-made aligners, retainers or other orthodontic appliances can of course also be produced with the help of the 3D printer.

Fully Digital Workflow at the Orthodontist

When digital technology is used in all phases of treatment, from diagnostics through to the completion of the orthodontic appliances and the follow-up care, we speak of a fully digital workflow in the orthodontic practice. Digitalization at every level makes the entire process more efficient, more precise and more comfortable for patients and for the practice.

In a fully digital workflow at your orthodontist, and especially as part of diagnostics, artificial intelligence (AI) is also being used more and more often. While it cannot conduct a conversation with a patient, it is already able to identify patterns in examination results such as X-ray images very precisely and to suggest treatment options on that basis. These are of course only suggestions, which are reviewed once more by a human expert — that is, by your orthodontist — and corrected if necessary.

By the way: digitalization does not have to stop at the practice door. Remote monitoring (“Dental Monitoring”), for example, offers further ways to keep track of how the treatment is progressing.

Dental Monitoring

Dental Monitoring refers to documenting and checking treatment progress by digital means. Patients can document their progress with photos or with special apps, for example, and have it assessed by their orthodontist without having to make a separate trip to the practice. This innovative system has many advantages: among other things, it enables direct communication and continuous advice and support during tooth movement, so that any problems can be identified at an early stage and we can make corrections early on if needed. This can reduce treatment times by up to 30%.