Another ADA Meeting has come and gone…always the best time of the year to see the latest and greatest when it comes to technology. Three days of mind-numbing meetings, walking the floor, visiting the vendors…and I still only scratched the surface. Here are some of the main products, services, and news that I heard, in no particular order:  

 

• Dentsply was showing a new patient education system called Cercon Coach. It is powered by Medvisor, who have a decent patient education system but doesn’t have the market share of a Caesy or Consult-Pro. It seems to hit three separate areas: patient education, staff training, and lab communications for prescriptions.
• I went by the booth for Touch Free Computing. While I was aware of their glass keyboard which works great for ops, they have two other cool products. One is a programmable wireless foot switch, which would work great with intraoral cameras in my opinion. They also had this very cool touch free “mouse” if you want to call it that. You basically stick a reflective target on their end of your dental mirror, and then wave it in front of a camera which looks like a webcam which is attached to the monitor. Very slick.
• I had a chance to sit down and speak with Dr. Lorin Berland. If you do cosmetic dentistry, then he needs no introduction. He showed me both his Smile Style Guide book, and Interactive Smile Style Guide CD. These are both the best I’ve seen and I cannot recommend them highly enough.
• Sota Optics was getting a lot of booth traffic for their new Claris i310D USB camera. In my opinion, this is easily the best USB intraoral camera on the market. You’ll need the docking-station model if you use Eaglesoft Imaging or Dentrix Image.
• Speaking of Dentrix, every computer at ADA in their booth was running G2,  the latest version. While nothing formal was announced, expect to see this version arriving in dental practices by Thanksgiving. If they work it like past years, they will use the lottery system to decide which offices get it first. Considering the vast changes, I’d expect them to release this in very small quantities at first to ensure they can handle the support calls.
• As people who read my blog are aware, there are a few dental software systems for the Mac that are now available. The only one I saw at the show was iDental, and while I’m not 100% sure if the product is shipping (nobody was at the booth when I stopped by), what I saw leads me to believe that this software is coming along nicely.
• I also saw I think is the only digital radiography system for the Mac, the aMac3. I don’t know any offices using this, so I’ll reserve judgment until I see it in action.
• Florida Probe was showing the latest version of their system. It is still, in my opinion, the best charting software on the market.
• RF America and Video Dental Concepts were showing three new products. They have a “wireless” sensor (there is still a wire connected from the sensor to the box, but the connection from the box to the computer is Bluetooth, like the Air Techniques Accent system) called the WDS Myray. They also have a new intraoral camera called the DiscoveryCam and a major update to their Copernicus system called the Discovery System.
• Owandy was showing their new digital pan, the I-Max Easy. Looks to be a very nice system and while I didn’t see the pricing, their systems are normally priced very competitively.
• Sigma Biomedics was showing a new sensor. While they used to be a reseller of Suni sensors, it appears that relationship is dead. Their sensor, the Bio Ray SDX, appears to be manufactured by Hamamatsu, a very high-end sensor.
• I saw the newest version of one of my favorite digital pans, the Blue-X, and it looks really sharp. I believe they have options for a ceph attachment coming shortly, if not out already.
• Dentrix was showing their newest IOC, the imagecam HD, and this is a very nice camera. The docking station has (finally) shrunk in size, and I think they are using Sota’s optical systems, which makes sense as the images are quite nice.
• TPC Advanced was showing their AdvanceCam. While this camera doesn’t get a lot of press, there are a ton of options and configurations.
• Big news from Air Techniques. First, they were showing their brand new Scan-X Duo, which is meant to compete with the Optime. The main selling point, besides the under-$10,000 price, is the fact that two people can use the machine at the same time. You’ll need their Visix software to have the dual inputs, which they are giving away for free until the end of the year. They also have an updated version of their Acclaim IOC, which has much better image quality than the previous model.
• I get lots of requests for time clock software, and the system I saw from Count Me In looks really nice. Instead of staff signing in, it uses a biometric fingerprint scanner to make the process very quick.
• I was very impressed with the CADI software. CADI is better known in Canada where they are sold by Synca, and they use the Mediadent core software that was developed in Europe (not to be confused with MultiMedia Dental Systems here in the USA). They plan to move more into the US market and I think there is plenty of room for a high-end program like this one.
• I saw two new systems from Kodak. First off, they have a brand new sensor line, the RVG 6100 series. Major improvements included attaching the cable to the back of the sensor, and having all sizes of sensors (0,1,2). I also saw their ILUMA Cone Beam CT Scanner. This is a very nice, high-end imaging system.
• If you want your dental news more current, then consider subscribing to Dental Tribune. It’s the only dental magazine that comes out weekly instead of monthly.

 

That’s about it for this year’s meeting. I’ll have a report from the Chicago MidWinter Meeting in a few months.