What would it take for a robot dentist to replace us?
I’m serious.
100 years ago you didn’t have digital scanners, mill machines or even composite fillings. To think 100+ years from now. The landscape of dentistry will look vastly different.
Rotten egg gagging Polysulfide impression was your go to in the 1920’s. Before then, you were using at least the more pleasant Beeswax. Tell those dentist folks back then that they would instead wave a wand over teeth that would capture incredible detail of the teeth and they would think your sorcery and witchcraft as impossible.
Another 100 years from now. I imagine we will have solved robot vision. The ability for artificial intelligence to ‘see’ the environment, scan and identify as we do. It will take time to feed the data necessary for computer neural networks to develop the processes to identify cavities and recommend treatment. But computer aided diagnosis would be the first step.
As soon as computer vision would be perfected. The mechanics of tooth drilling and restoration would be tackled next. The machine/robot would likely look nothing like a human. Form factors could let it take any number of shapes. But I could imagine a specialized hockey puck, where the patient bites on and a host of sensors, water and lasers excise cavitated pits into teeth. And just like a 3D printer, it could form a filling mold and drop it right into the fresh opening. Self healing material properties would directly bond to the enamel and dentin. Any issues with pulp or nerve would likely be pulpotomied with a special medicament applied to self heal as well.
Look even further into the future. We will likely see how archaic and destructive mechanical removal of decay was. Instead, gene editing will disembowel all acidic bacteria in our mouths. Teeth damaged through trauma could be reconstructed with stem cell placements in the jaw.
It all sounds so science fiction at the moment. Technological advancement is accelerating. The changes in the last 20 years (brick phone to smart phone, CD’s to solid state drives, 56k dial up to 5G LTE) can be felt in comparison to the 20 years prior to then (color television, internet just created, floppy discs).
You and I are merely mamelons in the speeding dentistry evolution. Enjoy it as it is today. Because tomorrow it continues to evolve into something new.
Thrivin,
Lam