As dental practices slowly but surely shift to a digital environment, new doors are opening for business opportunities.
Styledent Technologies -- a spin-off of Styledent, a 40-year-old dental laboratory -- is betting that the adoption of smartphones and tablets by dentists in their practices will translate into a promising future for Dental Rx, the company's new dental lab prescription app.
— Lidia Croteau, Styledent
Technologies co-founder
Dental Rx, the result of collaborative efforts between Styledent Technologies and Bold Technologies, a smart TV and mobile app development company in Orlando, FL, allows practitioners to email their prescription and photos to the dental lab of their choice.
"We're seeing more and more applications for educating patients," said Lidia Croteau, a co-founder of the Quebec, Canada-based firm. "But we needed something more practical that a dentist can use on an everyday basis that will save them time."
With Dental Rx, practitioners use a tablet or smartphone to create a profile by filling in various fields with their name, address, license number, and the name and address of their preferred lab, and this information is automatically remembered for each subsequent prescription. They then take a head shot of the patient, plus another picture with a shade stump held in front of the patient's teeth, and enter the patient's information into the app, along with the type of restoration, material, and a due date. Then the information is emailed to the lab.
With Dental Rx, practitioners take a patient head shot and a picture with a shade stump held in front of the patient's teeth, and enter the patient's information into the app with the restoration type, material, and a due date. Then the information is emailed to the lab. Image courtesy of Styledent Technologies."There's a scroll-down menu on the type of restoration needed, the shade, the dental material, and the due date," Croteau said. "And then you hit a button that sends the prescription to both the lab and the dentist. At the end, it gives the dentist a case number that he puts in a box along with his impression, antagonist model, and bite registration."
When planning for crown and bridge treatments, Dental Rx can be used to discuss a case with the lab while the patient is still in the chair or for patients that cannot be sent to the lab for a shade appointment, according to Croteau.
With digital photography being used more and more in dentistry, especially for aesthetic cases, any practitioner who does cosmetic dentistry can incorporate the model into his or her business, she added. Dental labs can also benefit from having their dentists using the app, according to Croteau.
"Labs sometimes work with incomplete information to do their cases," she said. "They want to do their best, give the best results, and that is how Dental Rx works -- as a step-by-step procedure for the dentist, ensuring that he or she includes all necessary information for the lab to work with."
A family tradition
Styledent Technologies' focus on the interaction between dentists and labs is no coincidence. Dimitri Tsichlis is a certified dental technician and co-owner of Styledent, a dental laboratory founded by his father in Europe in 1965 that specializes in crown and bridge, implants, and cosmetic dentistry.
Tsichlis' collaboration with Croteau, who also worked at Styledent, resulted in the creation of Styledent Technologies. The company officially launched in June with the release of Dental Rx, which is currently available for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch from Apple's App Store.
"This mobile prescription idea was inspired by Dimitri's day-to-day reality and understanding of what dentists and labs need," Croteau explained. "Labs want to receive pictures for their aesthetic cases to be able to give the best results, but dentists are often discouraged from taking pictures because of the extra steps involved."
Styledent Technologies is already working to expand its flagship product offering.
"Right now, Dental Rx is just for crown and bridge treatments," Croteau said. "We're going to add an orthodontic and an implant model as well."
The company is also working to bring the app to the Android smartphone platform and offer more functions on both platforms.
Given the interest and popularity in tablets and smartphones -- Styledent Technologies' market research determined that roughly 50% of dentists use a smartphone or tablet device in their practice -- the company intends to explore their use in dentistry.
"We're concentrating our actions on developing mobile apps," Croteau said. "We want to create and develop new tools using new technologies for the dental industry. That's the main goal and vision of Styledent Technologies."
