Trends in dental technology—analogue and digital go hand in hand

Dominik Kruchen

Fri. 10. March 2023

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This year, the International Dental Show’s (IDS) centenary year, the 40^thedition of IDS, the world’s leading trade fair for dentistry, will focus on the future interaction of analogue and digital technology and dental care for patients.

Overall, the dental industry continues to be strong. Even in these difficult times of the COVID-19 pandemic and war-related upheavals in the global economy, the dental industry has not lost its innovative power and is presenting new and further developments. During the severe pandemic-related turmoil, the structural model of the residential and private dental practice and the master dental laboratory impressively demonstrated its quality and flexibility by maintaining the provision of high-quality dental and dental technology services even under the most difficult circumstances.

The market offers powerful systems for many dental tasks. The rapid technological developments are especially interesting for dedicated dental technicians, and digitalisation of the workflow for the fabrication of complete dentures is a major topic. Until a few years ago, digital technology in the dental laboratory was mainly used for subtractive procedures. The digital additive processes developed in recent years, in combination with new materials, offer many opportunities to improve processes, offerings and the quality of dental restorations. Certainly, increasing digitalisation in the laboratory will help to compensate for the shortage of skilled workers in some areas of dental technology.

However, digitalisation is not only taking place in diagnostics, planning and production but also in communication between the practice and the laboratory. This creates new opportunities and possibilities, but also gives rise to concerns regarding data security and networking of practice and laboratory management software. From mid-2024, German legislation will require that the country’s dental laboratories are integrated into the German healthcare system’s telematics infrastructure, a platform that enables the secure exchange of health data, thus increasing data security.

Despite all the technical possibilities, digital prosthetic dentistry is no less demanding than analogue technology. Quality-oriented digitalisation requires specialised skills and cooperation between dentistry and dental technology. For this reason, dental practices continue to rely on their dental laboratory, especially for complex restorations, as a partner with a high level of expertise in manufacturing, materials science and compliance with European medical device regulations.

Without well-trained technicians, a dental laboratory cannot be successful and compete in the digitalised world. The new training regulation for the dental technician trade in Germany, which came into force on 1 August, does justice to the dynamic technical progress and the requirements of a professionally and communicatively networked and digitalised working environment.

The Verband Deutscher Zahntechniker-Innungen (association of German dental technicians’ guilds) underlines the importance of dental technical training through its renowned competition for young talent, the Gysi award. The award ceremony will take place on 16 March at IDS. All visitors to the fair can see the quality of the winning entries for themselves at the exhibition in the passage between Halls 10 and 11.

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