Dental & Oral Health

In the book “Seeing what’s next,” Clayton Christensen coined the term disruptive innovation and further predicts the future of different industries. Disruptive innovation may be defined as an innovation that disrupts an existing market by taking out a service or product in that market and entering it into a new or another existing market. As a result, this decreases the value of one market while increasing value of another. After examining various case studies, it was determined that Clayton Christensen disruptive innovation model may be applied to predict the future of dentistry. An infographic was created to illustrate this notion. Education differentiates the level of the hierarchy, while the area of each segment represents market size available for that section. With time, it is natural for services to decrease sectors. In the current day, you will find general dental practitioner offices that offer more services outside the general dentist scope. Practitioners have access to continuing education courses allowing them to be trained in areas of specialty, such as Invisalign. There is an increased prevalence of general dental practitioner offices offering services for extractions and implants, rather than referring a patient out. The general dentist can perform the operation if they believe they can perform up to the standard of a specialist. If not, the dentist may hire a specialist to come into the office and carry out the surgery in-house. This scenario will happen for an array of reasons. Research contributes to each disruptive innovation through finding new biological treatments, such as natural adult tooth growth with the contribution of laser stimulation, the addition of fluoride in public water, and the implementation of technology to aid treatment. This is important in dentistry to continuously enhance the care that a health care provider can give to patients.