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Dental Tribune United Kingdom Edition

O n occasion of Scandefa, a major dental fair in Scandinavia, DTI recent- ly visited the 3Shape headquar- ters in the heart of downtown Copenhagen, to learn about the company’s new products and future strategies. The historical building right next to Kongens Nytorv square and the Royal Danish Theatre features light and airy rooms, a perfect envi- ronment for a young, passion- ate and ambitious organisation driven by the quest to develop the best technological solutions in 3D Scanning and CAD/CAM. Often called “The Google of the Dental Industry” 3Shape was launched 11 years ago in a one room apartment by two young and ambitious graduate students from the Technical University of Denmark and Copenhagen Busi- ness School - Tais Clausen and Nikolaj Deichmann. At that time Tais was finishing his master thesis on a groundbreaking 3D scanning technology and Nikolaj was finalising his Master of Fi- nance and Economics. Knowing each other from common friends they joined forces to participate in the prestigious Venture Cup business plan competition, or- ganized by McKinsey, in which they finished 2nd. Throughout the competition they were con- stantly discussing how the tech- nology could be commercialised so the idea of launching 3Shape was born. Initially they approached companies in the hearing aid in- dustry with the idea to develop a quality control system for hear- ing aid shells and earmolds. Similar to a dental restoration, the devices need to be custom fit to the patient’s hearing canal and they’re traditionally made by taking an ear impression that is then manually sculpted, cut and used to make a mould – a time consuming, manual procedure. “When we had these first meetings we realised that we could actually create a mass cus- tomisation production system. So instead of just checking the quality we decided to go directly for changing the workflow com- pletely, from a manual process where you spend several hours of shaping the hearing aid shells to a completely digital work- flow,’’ Deichmann said. 3Shape digitised the whole manufacturing process by intro- ducing a 3D scanner for ear im- pression taking, a management software, a CAD software that is needed to simulate the position of all the electronic components, which need to fit along with the shell into the patient’s ear by tak- ing minimal space and a CAM software for controlling the manu- facturing equipment. They devel- oped the system for one specific hearing aid manufacturer but re- tained all rights to sell the technol- ogy to others. There were only six companies controlling approxi- mately 90 per cent of the global hearing aid market and within a period of three years all of them went from a completely manual to a completely digital produc- tion. Today about 90 per cent of all hearing aid devices are produced by using 3shape’s technology. Tais and Nikolaj were always aware of the 3D scanning tech- nology’s enormous potential so they soon looked at other indus- tries, such as the dental labora- tories, where the manufacturing processes are similar to the hear- ing aid industry. In 2004 3Shape began to receive an increasing amount of requests from dental companies that were interested in the technology. ‘‘We quickly decided that if we wanted to replicate our suc- cess in the hearing aid industry we needed to go for the full solu- tion to have a very user-friendly system that the dental laborato- ries would adopt. So we went to a lot of labs, small ones and big ones, and tried to figure out how we could optimise the processes instead of just finding a better way to make zirconia copings. From the very beginning our vi- sion was to achieve a complete switch from analog to digital,’’ Deichmann explained. 3Shape introduced its first 3D dental scanner and CAD/CAM software for virtual restoration design at IDS Cologne 2005 and the system became a raving success. In the following years the company extended and en- hanced their dental lab product range by continuously listening to and involving their customers from the early stages of the prod- uct development process. “Perhaps the most impor- tant lesson we have learned is that successful innovation is only successful if it moves and is guided in directions that truly benefit professionals in their daily work,” pointed out Tais Clausen, CTO and spearhead of the 3Shape development team. Today CAD/CAM has con- quered the dental labs and clin- ics, ensuring high profitability by maintaining top level quality through standardised and con- trolled treatment and produc- tion processes that are also ben- efitting the patient. In Germany, traditionally an early adopter of new technologies, nowadays approximately 82 per cent of all ceramic restorations are already produced by using CAD/CAM technology.” The question today is no longer if CAD/CAM will en- dure in the industry, but rather when all dental professionals will be taking advantage of it,” Clausen said. After having conquered the dental lab industry, 3Shape lev- eraged the proven technologies also to the dental clinics. “We did an analysis of all existing scanning systems on the market and defined what we like and what we don’t like about them. We wanted to do a system that incorporated all the advantages and eliminate all the drawbacks of the existing systems. Our so- lution really needed to be faster, easier, more accurate and more reliable.” Deichmann said. At the opening day of the In- ternational Dental Show 2011 in Cologne, 3Shape launched its newest achievement, the TRIOS intraoral impression-taking so- lution, which aims at revolu- tionising the work in the dental practice. Their booth was liter- ally flooded by dentists to try the TRIOS 3D scanner in sleek and elegant design, seldom seen in dental clinical equipment. One of the TRIOS 3D scan- ner’s notable features is that it does not require dentists to ap- ply spray or powder to coat the patient’s teeth, making scanning an easy, fast and patient-com- fortable process that doesn’t ruin scan accuracy by adding mate- rial to teeth surfaces. In addition it can scan any materials, such as metals, semi-transparent materi- als and skin. It only require min- imal amount of training for use in clinical practice from day one. The scanner captures over 3000 2D images per second, which is 100 times faster than a conven- tional video camera. Dentists who witnessed the presentations at IDS stated that the “impres- sion-free” dental practice seems to be just around the corner. An open communication in- terface allows the dentists to send the scanning data by internet di- rectly to the lab of their choice where the technician can start designing the restoration solu- tions immediately using 3Shape DentalSystem software or the ap- propriate interface to third party software. The TRIOS communi- cation software also includes a tool to visualise the technician’s solutions for the patient, for example on an iPad, while the patient is still in the chair, which is especially important for ante- rior cases. The system is designed to give dentists best quality resto- rations and treat more patients Moving the dental world from analogue to digital - 3Shape’s success story continues by Bernhard Moldenhauer & Matthias Diessner, DTI From right to left: Nikolaj Deichmann (CFO), Tais Clausen (CTO) and one of the in-house developers at 3Shape 3shape headquarters in Copenhagen May 23-29, 201126 Company Profile United Kingdom Edition