Dental News - AG.Live CON highlights key trends of transformation in the dental industry

Amann Girrbach

Sun. 2. May 2021

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KOBLACH, Austria: Digitisation in the dental industry is unstoppable, heralding change and offering enormous potential. Many dental technicians and dentists want to seize this opportunity, as was evident from the large number of participants in AG.Live CON. At this digital dental conference and exhibition, 38 international speakers presented the blueprints for a new dimension of a unified dentistry in numerous live presentations and discussions from 20 to 24 April.

The benefits of digitisation are clear, as Prof. Daniel Edelhoff explained in the panel discussion: “In more and more clinical work processes, analogue steps are being replaced by digital technology, which brings about enormous advantages: the simplification of process steps, reproducibility and a high degree of predictability.”

However, the communication gap between dental technicians and dentists has emerged as a key issue. “Laboratories have invested heavily over the past few decades and digitised in the field of CAD/CAM. However, digitisation currently stops at the interface with the dentist,” said master dental technician Andreas Kunz during the panel discussion. The experts unanimously agreed that the greatest deficit currently lies in combining all available patient data in a meaningful manner and then using this data to provide patient-specific treatment.

More than the sum of its parts

Teamwork is important for the benefit of the patient. “For a complex restoration, you need a highly competent partner in the laboratory and a highly competent clinician. Then their combined expertise is more than the sum of the individual parts,” emphasised Prof. Florian Beuer during the discussion. The objective must be for the two to join forces in the best possible manner.

This is precisely the mission that Amann Girrbach has set itself, and it thus, after five years of development, has launched AG.Live, the largest digitisation initiative in the company’s history. This web-based portal for collaboration between laboratories and dentists offers perfect digital services at all levels. To give an example, AG.Live is a central tool for support, digital case management, networking, infrastructure and material management. In addition, it represents a knowledge database and will gradually replace Amann Girrbach’s C3 customer portal.

The platform networks machines and materials in the laboratory, thereby simplifying processes and increasing quality and reproducibility. The biggest advance, however, is providing the link in a growing global network of digitally operating dental professionals. This bridges the interdisciplinary gap between dentists and dental technicians and facilitates future-oriented collaboration. In this network of optimised and new partnerships, the participants can focus on their strengths and better position themselves on the market.

Extending the digital Ceramill CAD/CAM workflow to the dentist

AG.Live also forms the basis and interface for the Ceramill Direct Restoration System (DRS), through which Amann extends the digital Ceramill CAD/CAM workflow to the dentist.

AG.Live and the Ceramill DRS, as well as all digitisation solutions from Amann Girrbach, support practices and laboratories on the journey that Prof. Jan-Frederik Güth described in his summary of the panel discussion: “Patient-oriented, focused, personalised, team-oriented, simplified and digital—that’s where the journey is headed.”

All lectures presented at AG.Live CON are still available on demand and free of charge at show.aglivecon.digital.

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