The Case For Innovation: Dentistry’s Slow Adoption Of New Technologies Serves As A Cautionary Tale

While advanced, computer-assisted dental implant surgery tools have evolved considerably, a 2020 report noted that the adoption of these solutions is not as widespread as the adoption of similarly advanced computer-assisted technologies used by other healthcare professionals.And while the adoption of cloud-based technology has increased significantly in most industries, dental practices have been slow to follow suit. In fact, businesses can learn a lot from dental industry’s negative experiences in 2009 and 2010, when the Great Recession precipitated a huge drop in patient volumes. Dental practices are wary of the perceived cost of implementing new technology, as well as the potential disruption to practice operations. Cloud-based dental software, for example, can help dental service organizations (DSOs) centralize, standardize and streamline everything from billing to scheduling, reporting and more. And in dental and medical organizations, advanced, cloud-based patient engagement software can facilitate and automate more timely communications between patients and practices. Taking a page from dental practices that have seen vast improvements by adopting cloud-based technologies, here are three key questions organizations should ask themselves when weighing their options. Implementing a cloud-based software solution could help dental practices ease maintenance issues and other time-consuming tasks and free up time to address other business issues or focus on revenue-generating activities.