Companies automate when the cost of performing a given task with human labor exceeds that of performing the same job using a machine. Automating a process therefore maximizes profits by reducing labor costs.
Public policies have increased the cost of labor, i.e. minimal wage along with State and Federal regulations. And, in dentistry, because of a very small labor pool, wages run high for all positions. In most dental entities, labor runs between 25% to 30% of revenues and, not infrequently, as high as 30%. If you add the dentists’ personal income and perks, it climbs to 50%.
Machines don’t take a vacation, they never show up late, they don’t slip and fall, and they don’t bring an age, sex or race discrimination case.
According to MIT professor Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee in their book The Second Machine Age “there’s never been a worse time to be a worker with only ordinary skills because computers, robots and other digital technologies acquire these skills and abilities at an extraordinary rate.”
I have heard the backlash from dentists about robots, how they will never replace many of the duties and tasks done in the dental office, including their own. But think about the level of complexity and sophistication to drive a car. All the parameters of decision making, judgment, mechanics, and choices that need to be made on a moment-by-moment basis. We now have autonomous cars and trucks – basically robotic cars.
The possibility of robots in dental offices replacing many functions of a dental office is not that far away. In a recent report, Robotics in Dentistry, researchers announced at the 79th General Session of the International Association for Dental Research (IADR) that a dental robot has been created and it can perform dental procedures.
Polish researchers constructed an artificial oral cavity and a robot on a 4:1 scale, so that intra- and extra-oral cameras and servomechanisms could be used. Images from the cameras were transmitted via internet to another building, where dentists could see pictures from two movable viewpoints inside the “mouth”. The dentists used joysticks and virtual reality glasses to operate hand pieces and materials syringes to prepare caries for restoration, perform endodontic therapy and prepare tooth surfaces for bridges. Dentists said they found it easy to guide the hand piece using the joystick and to control its position using the cameras.
Infusion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into robotics development, with its deep learning and machine to machine communication, will significantly increase the entire level of sophistication. With dental practices becoming much more like technology centers, where many of the clinically and administratively functions are done robotically along with all other ways of detecting and managing diseases far earlier in the disease progression cycle, dental practices will move from ‘fix-it shops’ to prevention clinics. Robotics and AI will dramatically reduce costs of delivery so prevention actually pays off.
Robotics in Dentistry – http://dx.doi.org/10.14219/jada.archive.2001.0327
