Dental News - World’s first unit-integrated intraoral scanner makes debut at ADA meeting

Robert Selleck, DTA

Fri. 10 October 2014

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SAN ANTONIO, Texas, USA: Why shouldn’t a 3-D intraoral scanner be just like any other critical instrument integrated into today’s sophisticated dental chairs? Well, it should be — for a number of reasons —according to E4D Technologies, including: ergonomics, efficiencies, practice monitoring and patient comfort. Released in Europe a year ago to an enthusiastic reception, the integrated chairs are making their U.S. debut at this year’s ADA meeting.

“The intraoral scanner, running on the Planmeca Romexis imaging platform, should be as common as any other instrument on the dental chair,” said Thomas Lokki, president of E4D Technologies, while demonstrating the technology in the exhibit hall Thursday at the ADA meeting.

The Planmeca PlanScan intraoral scanner is holstered on an adjustable arm that raises and lowers and swings in and out from the chair’s base to provide maximum ergonomic comfort and flexibility for the operator. A display screen is integrated into the holder, but the images also can be displayed in real time on an integrated pad screen, a larger screen facing the patient or on an external display elsewhere in the operatory or practice. There’s even a spot for an iTouch. The scanner itself can be detached and moved from chair to chair as needed, so a single scanner can still serve a number of operatories.

On the individual chairs themselves, a wired or wireless foot pedal can control everything. Because the system is built on the Planmeca Romexis platform, which integrates virtually all of a practice’s scanning devices (2-D, 3-D, cone-beam and CAD/CAM) into a shared database, the system is ideal for practices looking for ways to more closely monitor use and maintenance of equipment.

“The real drivers behind the popularity of this are large group practices and dental schools with hundreds of chairs,” Lokki said. “We can provide information on usage that nobody else can. The number of hours of service, when maintenance is needed and much more.”

Lokki said he expects the integrated chairs and monitoring service to become more popular with smaller practices, too, as the technology in general takes further hold. Meanwhile, schools with 600-plus chairs rely on the monitoring service to stay on top of exactly how the instruments are being used. Each chair has its own URL address, so a practice is able to monitor exactly why and how often instruments are being used and exactly when scheduled maintenance is needed. Plus, if there’s a problem with the system, a tech support staff is available 24 hours a day to access specific chairs online to troubleshoot software or hardware.

“It’s the future,” Lokki said. “We refer to it as the industrial Internet."

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