Smart toothbrushes 

Our home will be filled with connected, smart devices in the future, so why would our bathroom be an exception. At first, it might feel a bit strange to let a sensor into one of your most intimate activities, tooth brushing, but it makes it a lot easier to maintain oral hygiene and prevent plaque or cavities. 

The smart electric toothbrush makes sure you are brushing your teeth the right way through its app and offers kids fun games to keep up the good habit of regularly cleaning their teeth. Philips’ Sonic are smart toothbrush comes packed with sensors in its handle. These provide real-time feedback via a companion app warning you if you are applying too much pressure, where you are brushing, and even coaches the user as to how to brush properly. And there are several such devices on the market from companies like Colgate and Oral-B.

Virtual 

Not to be confused with AR, Virtual Reality (VR) completely closes off the outside world with a dedicated headset and immerses the user in a virtual environment. By slipping such a headset on their head, students and aspiring dental surgeons can be transported to the OR from their couch; while patients can visualize a calming landscape while seated at the dreaded dentist’s chair to improve their experience.

Today only a few students can peek over the shoulder of the surgeon during an operation it is challenging to learn the tricks of the trade like that. With a virtual reality camera, surgeons can stream operations globally and allow medical students to be there in the OR using their VR goggles. Dentistry even outpaced other fields of medicine in adopting this method. Back in 2015, Nobel  held the first dental surgery filmed through VR and allowed observers to virtually assist the whole procedure from the surgeon’s perspective. In comparison, the first VR-recorded surgery was performed at the Royal London hospital in 2016. The technology can further be used to help dentists build on their empathy skills through simulations putting them in the shoes of their patients or challenging situations on the patient side, VR might be the solution to our dentist’s office anxiety. An experiment with 69 participants showed that VR can be used as an effective distraction tool in dentistry. Patients wore goggles that displayed calming natural scenes and remembered the treatments more positively afterward. Opera VR is one such VR tool for reducing dental anxiety 

If you are reluctant to go to the dentist, imagine how hard it is for children, patients with special needs, or the elderly in nursing homes. Another issue is distance: people living in rural areas rarely get access to a dentist, and rarely have the possibility of choice. This can change significantly with the spread of

 services offered by companies like The Teledenists and Mouthwatch provide easier access to oral and dental care; are significantly cheaper for patients; shift towards cheaper prevention practices, and allow patients to consult with otherwise unavailable medical professionals. For instance, MouthWatch’s TeleDent service offers an all-in-one teledentistry platform allowing patients to capture images, send relevant information to a dentist remotely, and do a live consult. The dentist might start a video chat with the patient and the caregiver so that the medical professional can see and talk to the patient, build rapport, help connect them and bring them into the office (if necessary).

Intra-oral camera

One of the greatest inconveniences while being seated in the dentists’ chair is that sometimes, no matter how wide you open your mouth, the dentist still cannot see what they would like to see, even by using the trusty dental mirror. Such situations are not only uncomfortable for both the patient and the doctor but also painful. However, the advent of intramural Al cameras can remedy this exact problem.