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Dentsply Sirona World 2019 – Las Vegas (Part 2)

Dr Dobrina Mollova, Dental Tribune Middle East & Africa (DTMEA), speaks with Julie Mroziak, Vice President of Dentsply Sirona Lab
Dr Dobrina Mollova, DTMEA

Dr Dobrina Mollova, DTMEA

Wed. 25 December 2019

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Interview with Julie Mroziak, Vice President of Dentsply Sirona

In this part of the interview, conducted at Dentsply Sirona World 2019, Las Vegas, USA, in October, Dr Dobrina Mollova, Dental Tribune Middle East & Africa (DTMEA), speaks with Julie Mroziak, Vice President of Dentsply Sirona Lab.

You said that the conference was a revolution in dental education. What makes it a revolution?
I think what makes this event revolutionary is the unique way in which we are able to put together high-value attracted-talent lectures combined with specialty tracks of breakout training and exceptional entertainment. It’s really a nice way to bring together several different laboratory and clinical specialties and also be able to provide some good networking and social time in a place like Las Vegas. It’s an unusual place to come to; there are not many places where you can put implant specialists together with orthodontists, prosthodontists and laboratory technicians, all in one setting. And I think learning from each other is what makes this a special, well-rounded type of revolutionary event. There’s great excitement here, a lot of positive energy coming from people learning together.

Many dental technicians from around the globe are attending the event today. How important is the dental laboratory’s portfolio of products and equipment for Dentsply Sirona?
What makes it so important that we have laboratory technicians in a setting like this for Dentsply Sirona is that we really have to understand the dynamics of what’s changing chairside in the clinical space. If a laboratory technician can truly understand what’s happening in that digital age, the change in technology, he or she can be a better partner to their dentists. So we feel that the value of the Dentsply Sirona Lab organisation is supporting technicians in the pivot of evolving digital communication channel. Dentists and dental technicians have to be able to grow in that space together, and by both of them hearing and learning what’s happening in each other’s space—materials, technology and chairside—they can be better partners together. We can come alongside of them and support them with that change. Therefore, it’s really critical that the laboratory group is part of and supportive of the technicians that come to DS World. We think that we can make them more confident in that change process.

Dentsply Sirona Laboratory introduced a number of important innovations at the International Dental Show (IDS) this year. Can you please tell us what were the most important ones, what is new about the Cercon xt Multilayer and will attendees of Dentsply Sirona World 2019 find anything new?
We had a number of different things that we launched this year. One of them highlighted the Cercon xt Multilayer. That’s really our new way in which we can support laboratories in zirconia science with integrated layering for better light dynamics, just an easier workflow for technicians to be able to mill and finish cases without really doing extra work—cutback or extra staining. It also falls in the family of other Cercon products. They all can fire at the same time, so there’s efficiency that laboratories gain by having a multilayer version that can fire in the same cycle as a traditional Cercon xt or ht version. Zirconia is still a very strong-growing category, so that is important for us. We also highlighted our new Multimat Cube and Cube press ceramic furnaces, one for firing and one for pressing, and they are for the lithium silicate and lithium disilicate categories as well as other pressable ceramics. The regular Cube can work with all ceramics and with metal veneering as well.

There is also the inLab Prosinter, which is a furnace that enables the technician to have more efficient flow in one device, that is the metal sintering as well as the ceramic sintering. Those are some of the highlights in equipment and material at IDS.

We have tracks for all of those different types of materials. We have the ceramic and zirconia material training. We’re completing work around the digital denture category. We are also creating integrating workflows by connecting digital impression taking through software, equipment and materials. It is a really wide range and combination of what we’re offering through the laboratory track here.

Dentsply Sirona has great expertise in scanning and CAD/CAM software, such as Lucitone®, IPN® and inLab®, which are globally recognised for quality. In the beginning of 2019, you entered into a strategic partnership with Carbon. What can dental technicians expect from this partnership?
Dentsply Sirona has continued to be an innovator in the material and technology space. It’s something that we’ve really put a lot of energy into and focus on. What we find is there are spaces where another company could support a part of the process to enable greater advancement. We will always be open to looking into those opportunities. In this particular space, Carbon was one of those potential partners that we could collaborate with to take us to another level in the new additive technology category of 3D printing. They really have a superior way in which their equipment can process digital light-curing materials. The Carbon-crafted science, together with the specific formulations that Dentsply Sirona brings for material, was able to allow us to advance to the second generation of 3D printing materials for digital dentures. This is really unique, the first high-impact denture base material in the market. I think Carbon brings great confidence for laboratory technicians because they provide such great service, installation and support, and because of their technology, and people trust the Dentsply Sirona material brands, so together this has been a very powerful message of partnership and collaboration. We’ve announced it in early 2019, and at the beginning of 2020 is when we are going to fully open up that new digital denture category to the US market. Thereafter, we will expand to other places around the world. But it’s a very exciting time for that partnership and collaboration.

Printing machines are individual and different in how they work, and part of what Dentsply Sirona Lab wants to do is to help educate technicians about those differences. The way materials come through a printer affects the physical properties you can get from those materials. It takes time to perfect the way that materials can form and then be ultimately cured to achieve the physical properties, so we want to help educate people.  There are many good printers on the market and we really see great advancements in lots of technologies. Some of them are very good for model production, potentially other indications, splints, chairside guides. However, for our Lucitone 3D Digital Print denture, Carbon M-series printers are the only devices that are validated and indicated for achieving the device physical properties that we claim.  It is important that laboratories understand the importance of following the steps of the workflow.

It is critical to us that we can help educate technicians, who are wary of the science in the beginning, on why we chose this partner and why the material works well and that we are continuing to conduct a lot of testing. We are partnering with universities to provide independent studies on the material and the workflow in the Carbon unit. As previously mentioned, it is only designed for their M-series printer; it won’t perform the same way in other printers. It’s important that we educate so that there is no failure and we can have confidence for our customers. When they print the device out, they must know that not just the fit but the long-term performance is going to be there. I think we have a responsibility as a company to help educate in that space because we don’t want people to be misled. Not all devices work the same, not all materials in those devices will work the same way. It’s very important as this last analogue part of laboratory work is pivoting to digital. We have to help them through that process. We think we can partner with laboratories to help them make that last transition from traditional dentures to digital dentures.

Education is one of the most important aspects of the Dentsply Sirona life and philosophy. The company is the most important and largest supporter of CAPP and the CAPP Dental Training Institute in Dubai. Together, we have trained more than 65,000 dental professionals over the past 15 years through conferences and clinical educational programmes. What do you think is important for sustaining this kind of collaboration and what is your advice for the future? What is your strategy for dental education in the short and long term, especially related to the Middle East?
Dentsply Sirona will continue to be a good innovator. That’s a part of our DNA. We are great at developing innovation science. What we understand is that it doesn’t mean anything unless we can truly educate people properly on how to use the material and the science to deliver excellent patient care. It’s all about advancing dentistry in the best way. If we are going to change patient’s lives, we have to make sure that technicians and clinicians feel confident it will deliver that technology. For us, bringing forward partnerships around the globe in locations where we can couple local expertise and regulation, whatever that would be—as we’ve said, it cannot be an infomercial, it needs to be a true training education format that’s credited—is really important and will continue to be important. We can’t do it all on our own, so having partnerships in key places like Dubai, the referencing of CAPP, is critically important to success because, again, the material doesn’t mean anything if you can’t utilise it properly and deliver it properly—both go hand in hand in a very special way. We believe that whole dental family is needed to work together, especially now with this digital change in process. Dentists and laboratories are going to need to be connected through our Connect Case Center. As files come through digitally, dentists and laboratories are going to be able to talk much faster about design, materials, and how they’re going to finish a case. That just improves and strengthens our relationship between the laboratory and dentist, so partnerships like these are critically important and we will continue to invest in them. Dentsply Sirona is training 432,000 dental professionals globally through 12,000 courses every year—you can see it’s something that we really care about investing in.

Digital technologies are developing at an unprecedented rate. CAPP is the founder of the CAD/CAM and Digital Dentistry Conference, a world first, in Dubai (the first edition was in 2005). Next year, we will be celebrating the 20th global edition (in Dubai and Singapore) during Expo 2020 in Dubai. CAPP is the official partner of Expo 2020, and we expect thousands of dental professionals to attend the event. How do you see and what do you expect from Dentsply Sirona’s participation in this event?
Twenty years in CAD/CAM technology; how dramatically different the industry has become since that advancement. CAD/CAM and the materials that are going through CAD/CAM devices, like zirconia, have revolutionised the crown and bridge workflow, so for us those milestones are really important. Of course, Dentsply Sirona will want to partner together, especially with our teams that are located in Dubai. Even though it’s global, we can help to promote those events together. We want to celebrate and recognise what those advancements have done, how technology has really been able to provide final restorations that help to make patients’ lives better. Truly, it’s very different to what it was 20 years ago and we’re looking for that same type of technology to expand into the digital dentures field as well, so that you’ve got everything, crown and bridge, digital denture, but I think those are really important events and we would be proud and honoured to be a part of promoting and supporting those types of global congresses. For us, it is important as well to make sure that we continue to wrap people into the process of continuing the workflow around digital between the laboratory and the dentist. It’s an exciting time and we are proud to be partnered along with you to do that.

We create modelling that shows all the efficiency time-savings that a laboratory will have, but also from the material side, so we run it all together like a business model and then educate the laboratory on that. If you can produce traditionally say eight dentures in a day, now with this Carbon and Dentsply Sirona technology, you can produce almost 32 dentures in a day. When you put the investment of the equipment together with the material, your savings per denture are much lower, and you can return the case faster to the dentist, with equivalent properties that you’re getting today. So you have to think about the whole story and that is why we are trying to help them. Since most Lab’s focus is on the craft of making the devices, we try to help support them on the business model and profitability.

There’s going to value and reason for both milling and printing. We still believe that there’s places where milling is really important, and there’s places where printing is really valuable and we’re trying to make sure that we can guide a laboratory so that they can choose the right thing. I don’t think there will ever be a time where printing will totally take over milling, but there are times when it’s important, so having both processes is really valuable.

Thank you very much for your time and the interview.

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