Kodak Files for Bankruptcy but not in Dental

All is well in the dental industry from the Kodak perspective ( except I cant get my old Kodak digital camera repaired). Onex (Carestream Dental) is actually Kodak Dental. Here is the official word that was sent to me:

As you likely have already read, Kodak announced this morning that they are filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. We will no doubt receive many questions about the potential effects Kodak’s recent financial challenges might have on our business. For the record, all of the assets of Kodak’s Health Imaging business were purchased in 2007 by Onex, the parent company of Carestream Dental, including more than 1,000 patents and the manufacturing facilities. Carestream Dental simply licenses the right to use the KODAK name on some of the products that we manufacture.

Carestream Dental is solely responsible for the design, manufacture and service of all Carestream branded and KODAK branded products that we sell. Please be assured that Kodak’s financial challenges do not affect Carestream in any way, and that we are as committed as ever to our customers’ success and advancing the state of dental care around the world. More information can be found at the link below. Many thanks for your continued help and support!

http://www.carestreamdental.com/kodak

Wyatt Wilson - My Friend at Acteon

Wyatt passed away suddenly last weekend at age 39. I spent time with him at the Greater NY meeting just 2 weeks ago when we were talking about his young son and daughter and the holidays. I met his son Logan over a year ago and like Wyatt he was a giant kid. Wyatt, although quite serious in his quest to constantly improve his company, always had time for me and others and loved to combine work stories with his life stories.

There are some people who you meet and immediately feel they are your new friend. This was Wyatt. He will be sorely missed of course by his family, as well as his far reaching dental family. This was way too soon soon to lose you big guy. Say a prayer for Logan, his daughter Rachel and wife Lauren.

Back Again

This has been my busiest year of lecture and travel. That along with some changes in the administration of my office as well as getting my son graduated from High School and off to College, I have let this blog slide. I have been to many dental meetings including the IDS in Cologne, Germany as well as looking at numerous new products and now have to get back to the reporting here. I hope to have more before the Greater NY Meeting right after Thanksgiving, where I will be seeing even more new products.

This year has brought us new innovations in intraoral scanning as well as several new entries. Conebam CT has taken off especially in the endodontic world. The Cloud has opened new vistas for practice management and patient education, while the iPad and clones are invading our everyday existence. There will be a lot of catching up to do here. As they say, stay tuned.

Wash and Disinfect Your New Keyboard from Econo-Keys

How about this great little keyboard/mouse (touchpad) I found at the Greater NY Dental Meeting. Small footprint and wireless. I put the little USB dongle into my computer and was typing in less than a minute. It seems like the perfect input device for a dental treatment room. Look at their website for an array of products like this. http://www.econo-keys.com/

3M moving Brontes unit out of Massachusetts

I worked with the Brontes team from the beginning in 2005 (or was it 2004?) and helped develop the clinical aspect of the intraoral impression scanner. It was acquired by 3M four years ago and the operation is now being moved to St Paul as, according to those I spoke with at 3M, it will allow better control of development and marketing of the LAVA COS product. I remember the first time I saw the "unit'- about 6 feet of wires and circuit boards that would ultimately be housed in a hand-held wand. The move is chronicled in an interesting article in the Boston Globe.
Brontes office closing is latest bite out of the Bay State’s R&D lab
http://bit.ly/ayvZaX

ADA Annual Session quick update

I am off to the airport and will be busy catching up at home. Here is a very brief summary of a few new things I saw at the ADA meeting in Orlando that is ending today 10/12. As I go through my notes there may be additions and of course more information.

Cariescan- a new caries detector that uses electrical impedance similar to apex locators. It shows porosity and ccan give an acccurate rendering of the location and size of the carious lesion but usingthe probe from occusal, buccal and lingual. www.cariescan.com

Orascoptic Freedom- new loupes with battery pack in the headset www.orascoptic.com

CAO group- new home bleaching product with wax forms that stay on securely ( you have to leave them on for an hour) www.caogroup.ccom

Philips Acquires Discus - This was the big news. It will be interesting to see if Discus stays as a whole or if parts are spun off.

http://www.newscenter.philips.com/main/standard/news/press/2010/20101011_discus_holdings.wpd

Eco Dentistry Association www.ecodentistry.org go green in your dental practice. It goes beyond fewer disposables- dental manufacturers are looking at ways to redesign products to reduce energy consumption and waste.

Oragenics- www.oragenics.com probiotics to reduce periodontal and caries producing oral organisms with simple daily mints.

Dental Sharing www.dentalsharing.com HIPAA compliant simple system to allow exchange of dental images and information among offices over the internet instead of email.

Eaglesoft releases version 16 patterson.eaglesoft.net . Users have many off their suggestions included in this update

Vidar xray scanner www.vidar.com unit digitizes xrays -fmx in (clear) mount, pan or other sizes. Not only scans but digitally enhances.

DentalEz (Star) www.dentalez.com change over to LEDs in the swivel connector for brighter and longer lasting fiberoptics.

Myray www.myrayamerica.com introduces X-Pod- a digital sensor attached to an iPod type device that displays and stores the images. Interesting entry for non networked offices.

Brush and zoom

Reported this AM. Philips has acquired Discus Dental. These rumors have been around for a while. It is an interesting fit for Philips as they are in the consumer health care market.  Discus also has many other dental products and processes. They recently got into the laser market with the acquisition of Zap laser. Should be interesting. Since I am at the ADA meeting today the buzz should give more insight for more info.

Physics Forceps?

One reason I proabably migrated to the tech side of dentistry, is the fact that I hate surgery and refer out 99% of extractions. I was "coerced" into looking at these novel "forceps". After seeing them and getting DVD, online and telephone training I realized that these are not really forceps. They are simple elevators using class 1 or class 2 lever LIGHT forces. If you look at them you will think they are tools of destruction. Far from it. Without posting the gory photos, today I was able to prep an anterior bridge and remove two failed post/core crowns that had little or no tooth structure above the ridge. This patient had been told that we were going to prep and temp and then send her to the surgeon. She saved the trip, I had complete control of the case and all are happy ( and I got paid for the extractions.....). Email me directly for details and more info. I may have embarked on a new career ( or just got lucky).
http://www.physicsforceps.com/ (Golden Misch)

What Implant Is That?

Lorne Lavine just found this very useful site. www.whatimplantisthat.com . If you have a radiograph of an implant and are not sure what it is, here is a great library. The site also asks its viewers and manufacturers to add to the library and fill in some of the blanks. This will be very useful when new patient shows up in your office. There is a "filter" that allows you to put in certain characteristics so that you don't have to scroll through almost 200 images.

The site is put together by Nate Farley, DDS and Kent Howell, DMD from Columbus OH. Thanks guys.

Cameras With GPS

Geotagging is a word that will show up in your new digital cameras. Many new models have built in GPS chips that tag the photo that you take with a location. You will never have to ask- "where was that?" Casio (EX-10HG) and Sony (DSC-TX7 ) are just 2 models with this feature. They were announced earlier this year and are supposed to hit the shelves any day.

Chicago MidWinter Meeting

If you must go to one meeting and don't mind the cold weather, this one has it all. My week started with a meeting with the principles of Dentra, a new Practice Management analysis program. You can get a preview at http://www.dentra.com/ . Then off to the Oral Health America gala which is a benefit for this organization. $400,000 was raised to help children have access to dental care. You can learn about their good work at http://www.oralhealthamerica.org/ . This black tie (optional) event is a who's who of dentistry and a chance to see me in a tux.

From that point on it was meeting after meeting- in fact Thursday and Friday were pretty much every hour on the hour. I was able to update on new products (electronic bruxing monitor from Finland), reincarnations of companies ( see the new Discus and new Denmat), updates in intraoral scanning as well as lab scanning of impressions, and more. Also announcement of an interesting merger of SciCan, MicroMega and SycoTec. Here are a few of the interesting items:

Apex locator that can read your files while in the handpiece http://www.medicnrg.com/
New research on performance enhancing mouthguards http://www.bitetech.com/
New compact inexpensive digital camera http://www.dinecorp.com/
Totally cleanable wireless computer keyboard http://www.cleankeys.com/
Caries detection with fluorescence ( reported here last year) http://www.soprolife.com/
New High def online CE http://www.dentaledu.tv/
and lots of secret new stuff......
I did miss my meeting with the new digital intraoral scanner from Israel and I apologize to my friends there at http://www.densys3d.com/ I will give a full report here as soon as I update my information.

Of course there was plenty of social time, meeting up with old friends, making many new ones, going to a great event at the top of the Sears tower ( going out on the glass balcony on the 103 floor) and staying up very late. Chicago is a great city and I will not be waiting until next February to get back there.

Curve Hero- new software with your server on the web

Curve Dental has introduced a web based Practice Management system that is run over the Internet with a simple web browser interface.

As web-based dental software Curve Hero offers advantages over traditional client/server applications with respect to implementation costs, convenience and data security. Because the software only requires a browser and an Internet connection, expensive investments in hardware, servers and IT services are not required. The convenience of the web allows the practice to access patient data from any location at any time, which is more flexible to varying lifestyle preferences. With patient data stored off-site at redundant and secure data centers, the practice is not threatened by theft, natural disaster or local hardware failure, greatly simplifying business continuity and disaster planning.


For more info call 888-910-4376 or visit http://www.curvedental.com/

Droid again

New app for Droid (Blogaway) that apparently allows me to put up a quick blog post. Let's see.......

Another Caries Detection System?

It started with DiagNodent. Then Midwest Caries ID. We have just seen the introduction of Spectra from Air Techniques. We are about to get SoproLife from Acteon. The Canary System from Canada was announced and Lantis Laser has been talking about Optical Coherence Tomography to be arriving any day. Now from Great Britain is CarieScan, which has an LED screen that gives a numerical as well as colored lights to indicate caries. Information can be gotten at www.cariescan.com . I will try and make some sense of all of this soon.

Google to Introduce URL Shortener

Many people use free services like www.tinyurl.com or www.bit.ly in order to compress long url's for use in forwarding, twitter, facebook and the like. Google will be putting their own version up soon. Here is the url
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/introducing-googles-own-url-shortener/15482/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SearchEngineJournal+%28Search+Engine+Journal%29

or in tiny url: http://tinyurl.com/googleshorten

or bit.ly http://bit.ly/googleshorten

It will be called : http://goo.gl/ and is only available right now for "google products".

Droid Gets an Update

On December 11, the Droid received an "Over The Air" update. This changed the front screen with the lock/unlock as well as sound on/off slidebar. It would still be better if all you had to do was click or touch on but it is a bit better. Also noticeable are improvements to the camera. Supposedly the battery usage is improved- I will see about that- I barely get a day out of the battery if I am using it with emails, phone calls, checking twitter, facebook and the like- isn't that what it is supposed to be used for??? I did buy an extra battery and extra travel charger.



There are also a lot of new "apps" although many are pretty bad- there are reviews available right on the Droid "Marketplace" with no holds barred. I have found the horizontal on-screen keyboard to be accurate and actually better than the pull out keyboard. The auto-correction and intelligent word guessing is great, and it learns your common words as you continue to use it and speed up your typing. If there were an option for no keyboard which would make this thinner and lighter I would go for it.



The voice recognition for searching has been very accurate and very helpful if you are driving and want to call someone in your contact list or need directions to the nearest fast food place- just ask it. I guess I am keeping it.

Edgar Garrison will be missed

My good friend and dental icon, Edgar Garrison passed away November 29. When Edgar was at his Garrison Dental Solutions booth or anywhere at a dental meting, he always had a big grin and a large hello to all he knew and those he did not. His sons Tom and John as well as any staff members always carry this attitude which helped in building their successful businesses. I always made it a point to find him no matter how busy I was at a meeting. My staff had the pleasure of meeting him at the ADA San Antonio and still talk about this "charming" man. He will be missed. Some of his life's details are here:

http://www.garrisondental.com/news/elg_112909.cfm

Oral Cancer Might Be Detected In Saliva Test For CD44

Researchers at Univeristy of Miami have found that patients with oral cancer carry a protein called CD44. They have found a method to find its prescence in saliva. At this point more study is of course necessary.
http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/14/3/735.abstract
and
http://www.journals.elsevierhealth.com/periodicals/ymhn/article/PIIS0194599801078731/abstract

GNY products- Acteon SoproLife

There were a few new products but Acteon launched its new caries detection system, SoproLife. (Light Induced Fluorescence Evaluator ). Unfortunately the paperwork for approvals for sale ( 510K) did not come in time for the meeting although it is due any day. Thus they could not actually sell this product but could show it. I was lucky enough to get a good look at the IDS in March and have been in touch with the developers in France and have been helping in assessing this product and giving some clinical input. Here is their website with some basic information. I will publish some of my own clinical photos when it is appropriate.

http://www.soprolife.com/

Greater New York Meeting- Part 1

The meeting was a success for the GNY staff but I am not sure the exhibitors were the beneficiaries. There were a number of classes right on the exhibit floor in "fishbowls" that were packed. There was a larger live operatory and an smaller one which also was packed- the large one seemed to have 200 or so seats. I watched a patient receiving some mini implants- the procedure was of course projected on the big screen. There were a myriad of courses that were very well attended- I had a chance to go into a number of rooms as I was helping the Yankee meeting people with some scouting. Thus, the exhibit floor seemed a bit sparser than usual.

From an education standpoint, this is a great step- above and beyond the typical classroom teaching. The big meetings have started to get a little stale and repetitive. Plus online CE has allowed many dentists and dental professionals to get their training ( and credits) from home. The economy for sure has kept spending down a bit and limited expensive travel related expenses. Of course as this year comes to a close, there are tax advantages to make those large purchases right now. In my next post I will go over some of the details of products and people who caught my eye.