Monday, May 20, 2013

Looking forward

Digital Orthodontics, the Future is Now!

I was in Ann Arbor for an orthodontic symposium in March, The Moyers Craniofacial Growth Symposium.  My orthodontic colleagues just call it Moyers. What I learned at the Moyers Symposium was a wake-up call for me.

This was the 40th year for the Symposium and represented a milestone.  It's theme was a reflection on the recent history of orthodontics as represented by the Moyers Symposium. The Symposium has always attracted the best and brightest of evidence based scientists. The Moyers is more academically oriented than many orthodontic meetings, which tend be more 'commercial' in nature.  By 'commercial' I mean things like practice management  and gadgets for an office.  The Symposium is more scholarly and attracts academics and students.
 
Jim McNamara is the force behind the Symposium and he is an amazing talent in orthodontics.  I was blessed to have him as my orthodontic chairman during my residency at Michigan.  He has been the key influence on my development as an orthodontist and is a inspiration to me on a personal level. So when he asked me to attend this year's Moyers Symposium, I readily accepted. (I need to do a post about the influence Dr. Moyers had on me, but that will have to wait for later.)

When I finished my orthodontic residency in 1991, I thought I had all the tools I would ever need to be an outstanding orthodontist, boy, was I wrong.  I had attended the best dental school in the world, Michigan, and finished at the top of my class. Then I completed a 3 year residency at the best institution for orthodontic education in the world under the most prominent faculty.  

I have never been an early adopter of the latest fad in orthodontics.  I have always been content to wait until a new technique or gizmo had been proven before investing the time and energy into something which would not give our patients either the best care possible or shorten their treatment time. And believe me, everyone's goal is better care in less time.  The orthodontic vendors know this too.  I remember a few years ago when everyone was jumping on the self-ligating bracket bandwagon. Each supplier had their bracket-du-jour with promises of shorter treatment time and too-good-to-be-true advantages.  I tried a revolutionary style of brace in my office which promised orthodontic nirvana.   It turned out that the hype had failed miserably; in almost every way.  Those braces caused more discomfort for our patients and actually prolonged treatment time.  That experience only reinforced the natural skeptic in me.

At Moyers this year, most of the speakers reflected on a career filled with change, and most looked to the future for further enlightenment.  I was struck with several powerful insights:
  1. I was trained during the "golden age" of orthodontics, by faculty whom have all made major contributions to the knowledge base of my profession. Most who left U of Michigan became either a dean or a chairman elsewhere.
  2. I was fortunate enough to have professors who recognized that evidence based data collected through randomized clinical trials was the only way to evaluate clinical data, and trained me to do so.
  3. The future of orthodontics is moving in a digital direction.
  4. The practice of orthodontics will continue to take advantage of new technologies.
  5. Orthodontic practices who don't adopt new ideas will fade into obscurity.
So what do those insights mean to me?  I will be making some major changes to way we practice orthodontics. In particular, I made a huge investment in technology. I'll be sharing those technologies on these pages as we implement them. Stay tuned for updates.