A pathway to success: implementing digital technology in dental school curriculum - an in-depth review

Intraoral scanners, milling units and 3D Printers have become staples of many clinical workflows in dentistry! All this comes with a monetary cost and perhaps more significantly requires dentists’ ability to adapt and learn. This is especially difficult in dental schools around the world where budgets are limited to obtain new technology and faculties are resistant to change. In this session, we will showcase three American dental schools that despite the odds have integrated digital dental technology into the preclinical and clinical education of predoctoral students.

Each school will present creative ways of utilizing technology within the Restorative dentistry curriculum to improve student learning of basic dental concepts in the preclinical courses. This includes dental morphology, Operative Dentistry, Fixed and Removable Prosthodontics. The speakers will share digital clinical workflows that were developed to build on Restorative concepts for students and improve patient care. As the world moves toward the digital age, these schools will illustrate how to incentivize change within the faculty body to adapt. This is a necessity as we strive to improve dental education and quality patient care.

The three schools represented at this presentation are Temple University Kornberg School of Dentistry, Boston University Henry Boldman School of Dental Medicine and University of Texas Health Houston School of Dentistry. The speakers collectively are active members and of ADEA CADCAM Special interest group. In addition, they have been active organizers for the American Digital Educators Workshop, a yearly meeting that invites Dental Educators from around the country to share best practices from their schools. It is their desire to network with European colleagues in efforts to learn and support each other’s endeavors in Dental education.