ABSTRACT
In the United States and several parts of Europe, there is an anticipated dentistry crisis impending, due to the shortage of new dentists in the workforce as well as increasingly unaffordable dental health care for low-income earners following the financial crisis. This has effectively created a possible dental welfare deficit problem, which calls for new, radical solutions. Drawing upon extant literature and “best-practice” experiences, this study investigates if and how digital dentistry could be used in the future to remedy this dental welfare deficit problem. Three-dimensional printing offers dentists ease and precision to craft high-quality material used in their procedures. Virtual reality (VR) may help dental students during training as well as patients during procedures, while augmented reality (AR) has the ability to optimize dental training, surgery, and custom orthotics. The study concludes that a combination of the new technologies will be needed in order to remedy the problem, along with political and market interest to do so. Hence, further debates with policy-makers on this topic are warranted.
