How the Future of Dentistry Looks to Young Practitioners
Dentistry 2040 Rise of the Algorithm Ken Randall, DDS FACD
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Abstract One feature of the emerging future that is likely to have significant impact on dentistry is artificial intelligence. AI is only equipment in the indirect sense. It is systems of algorithms that manage huge quantities of data nearly instantaneously. AI is designed to enhance and in some cases replace human judgment. It has already found its way into many fields, including medicine, with applications in diagnosis, treatment planning, treatment guiding, patient management, and continuous monitoring of patients’ health biomarkers. To an unknown extent, AI has the potential for improving oral health, but it will likely do so by disrupting traditional staffing and work flow. No one can clearly see this future, but it is time to ponder some questions about the implications for these new capabilities.
Dr. Randall maintains a private practice in Hixson, Tennessee; ken.randall444@gmail.com. He was the fourth Regent Intern of the college from 2017 to 2018.
Journal of the American College of Dentists
ack in third grade, I had to write a paper on what the world was going to look like in 2020. It was an exciting project to think about and complete because I could not wait to go into outer space! Surely by 2020 we would be traveling Star Trek style wherever we wanted in the galaxy. We already had a space program that took astronauts to the moon and a space station named Mir was being built to orbit the earth. While we still had card catalogs in the library to find our books, there were these things called computer labs that were pretty cool. Just a few more years, I thought, and the nicest, newest computers would certainly enable us to have commercial space flight accessible to whoever wanted to walk up to the desk and buy a ticket. We have made progress with commercial manned space flight as evidenced by the SpaceX DEMO-2 mission earlier this year. However, we still have a long way to go before my third grade vision of a world like Star Trek becomes a reality. I wonder what thought dentists gave their future when I was in grade school. Could they have even envisioned the imaging devices, materials, record keeping, and other technology we take for granted these days? There are so many aspects of the dental industry that could be discussed in an article about the future of dentistry that it is impossible to address them all in a single journal. While I am certainly no expert, I would like to investigate an emerging
technology that is likely to be one of the most influence across dentistry and society as a whole over the next 20 years—artificial intelligence (AI).
Defining Artificial Intelligence AI refers to a spectrum of digital algorithms that attempt to recreate or improve upon the decision making of humans. Just as humans get more “intelligent” as they learn from experience, so does machine learning improve AI. AI will not replace what dentists do with their hands— although computer-guided surgery is well-established now in dentistry. AI will contribute to how dentists think about practice: marketing, patient management, diagnosis, treatment planning, and very likely, continuous monitoring of oral and medical conditions in real time on a continuous basis. It will change the definition of oral care. Since IBM’s Deep Blue beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, the possibilities for machine learning have become evident to the world. Now, Amazon’s Alexa functions continue to get smarter as one interacts with it over time. It is beyond the scope of this article to break down and define the spectrum of AI, but suffice it to say that there is a breadth of capability and sophistication to the way different computers are programmed to have AI properties.
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