“I’ve just changed my dentist,” Ashley Byrne tells me. “Because he refused to buy an intraoral scanner (IOS).”
For anyone familiar with the Associate Director of Corus Byrnes, a Dental Lab in Oxfordshire, it may surprise you it has taken him so long. Having bought the business from his parents in 2011, Byrne has been banging the digital dentistry drum for well over a decade.
What prompted him to change his dentist recently is what prompted him to put the business on this road in the first place: “I don’t want a conventional impression any longer. The benefits of a scanner are just too great.”
A digital workflow, Byrne will repeat throughout the day, will yield a less invasive process and more personalised treatment for patients; products that are built from their specific data rather than serial devices derived from educated guesswork. He talks of ethics, of morals, and then he talks business.
Corus Byrnes has been leveraging 3D scanning and 3D printing technologies to deliver patient-specific dental products, from models and splints to dentures, implants and restorations, for some time now. He proved he could establish an effective business with this digital backbone a decade ago. And now, he’s working to scale it.
At the point of care, Byrne supposes that most patients feel the same way he does. In the back end, he knows a digital approach to dentistry presents a much better chance at offering enhanced dental care for the masses.
