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The 9 revolutions reshaping the modern dental business
- Chris Barrow
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
If you’re still running your practice like it’s January 2024, you’re being left behind.
Over the past five years, we’ve witnessed a fundamental shift in how successful dental practices operate — not just clinically, but operationally, commercially, and culturally. Over the last 12 months, that pace of change has accelerated.
The innovators, the early adopters, the ones who refuse to let their business become a museum — they’re already embracing these changes.
I periodically update my list of "revolutions" and, in researching for my current workshop series, realised that a review was necessary.
Here are the 9 revolutions that are not coming — they’re here, and they’re defining the new rules of dentistry:
1. The Intra-Oral Scanner: no longer optional
The IOS is no longer just a high-end replacement for impression material — it’s a cornerstone of the modern patient journey. From the initial assessment to the Dental Health Review and into treatment planning for every conceivable treatment modality, it builds trust, improves accuracy, and enhances conversion. If you’re not using it at every stage, and in every surgery, your competitors will thank you.
2. The Digital TCO: more than just a smile
Your Treatment Coordinator should be GDC-registered and fully trained on the IOS. Why? Because patients understand pictures better than words, and digital communication builds more confidence than sales patter or blinding with science ever will.
3. The Modern Dental Therapist: stepping up
Therapists embracing the full scope of their GDC remit are changing the game. When armed with digital tools like the IOS, they’re no longer just scaling and polishing, or even filling(!) — they’re building treatment plans, enhancing patient relationships, upselling treatment to other clinicians and driving revenue.
4. The 3D Printer: bringing lab work in-house
Off-site design with on-site printing? Smart practices are reducing their reliance on third-party labs, shortening treatment times, reducing their cost of sales and increasing profitability through in-house 3D printing.
5. The Smile Simulation: from AirBrush to AI
Whether it’s a simple smartphone app, Digital Smile Design or Invisalign’s Smile Architect, simulation tools are becoming a must-have for consultations. Helping patients visualise outcomes and commit to treatment.
6. Guided Dentistry: plan. predict. profit.
You now have the ability to plan and deliver faster, safer, more predictable results with fewer appointments.
Guided dentistry (both implants and crown & bridge) reduces complications, boosts efficiency, and creates a medico-legal safety net thanks to a robust audit trail.
Bonus? Standardised pricing and fixed costs — a financial manager’s dream.
7. AI Note-Taking and feedback: the silent 24-hour sales coach
AI is now helping clinicians, TCOs and managers alike by transcribing, summarising, and even coaching based on conversations and consultations.
8. Chairside Dentistry: one-hour dentistry is here
Scan. Design. Print. Fit. All in a single day.
Chairside dentistry is transforming patient expectations and practice operations.
The “One-Hour Crown” is not an aspiration. It’s the new benchmark.
9. OpenAI in Marketing: Is SEO dead? Long live AI-search
This is the subject I'll be covering at my workshops.
The days of Google being your number one digital search channel are numbered.
OpenAI and generative search are rewriting the rules of how patients find your practice.
If you’re not creating human-focused, AI-optimised, storytelling content, if you're not answering the FAQs that are being asked in your postcode, you’ll be buried behind the digital equivalent of page two of Yellow Pages.
So… are you part of the revolution?
These revolutions aren’t optional. They’re not experimental. They’re now foundational. The practices that are winning today — and will dominate tomorrow — are the ones embracing these changes with energy, urgency, and open-minded leadership.
If your team isn’t ready, get them ready. If your systems aren’t fit for purpose, change them.
And if you don’t know where to start — you know where I am.
Here's a PDF version of the "9 revolutions" to download, print and display on your staff-room wall - just to ensure that everyone in your team knows that the biggest event of the year isn't the return of Oasis (to clarify - that's the band 😉) - it's dentistry.
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