30 January 2026

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Digital dentistry: The future

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Digital dentistry may be defined in a broad scope as any dental technology or device that incorporates digital or computer-controlled components in contrast to that of mechanical or electrical alone. The main areas of digital dentistry are computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing and intraoral imaging – both laboratory and clinician-controlled; caries diagnosis; computer-aided implant dentistry – including design and fabrication of surgical guides; digital radiography – intra- and extra-oral, including cone beam computed tomography; electric and surgical/implant hand pieces; lasers, occlusion, and temporomandibular joint analysis and diagnosis; shade matching; photography – extra-oral and intra-oral; practice and patient record management – including digital patient education.

Digital dentistry is more than just hype. Digital technologies continue to aid dentist's efforts to ensure patients receive the best possible treatment under the most comfortable circumstances. If the dental technology is fully understood and properly implemented, then dentists can provide better care for the patients and improve their clinical practice. Digital dental technologies enable consultations with patients and collaborations with other dental specialists to be conducted quicker and with more immediate and detailed information than in the past years. The quality of care improves through enhanced diagnosis and such advancements in dental technology enable patients to receive modern solutions to traditional dental problems.

The area of digital dentistry must include improved efficiency with respect to both cost and time, improved accuracy in comparison to previous methods, and a high level of predictability of outcomes. The major limitation of most areas of digital dentistry is cost. Despite this, if the new technology meets the above criteria to be considered an advantage, then return on investment can be high if properly implemented. One of the common pitfalls in adopting new dental technology is lack of desire on the part of the clinician and team to be adequately trained. Some clinicians will purchase a new technology, yet never read the owner's manual or seek advanced training on how to operate the technology efficiently, often leading to high failure and abandonment. Misunderstanding the new technology tends to foster slower adoption rates. This scenario can be easily avoided by greater attendance of basic and advanced hands-on courses in these areas of technology.

Smaller, smarter, and more ergonomic computing devices will support an increasing proportion of dental practice activities. Technology will make practice management more efficient, mainly by reducing transactional overhead. Educational software and intelligent assistants will increasingly support the needs for decision making in clinical practice. Research will benefit from automated tools for data acquisition, management, and analysis. Dentistry must actively shape the application of technology. It can do this by developing a cadre of experts in dental informatics, relying on sound research principles, effectively disseminating best practices, and developing strategic objectives for the implementation of technology.

The future of dentistry is now. If we wait for another few years to integrate these new dental technologies, we will be left decades behind.

Author: Neeta. Pasricha

Source: https://go.gale.com/