Through the Dentsply Sirona Academy, the Company offers the largest industry-supported Clinical Education program in the world.
The numbers reflect its ability to reach dental professionals all over the world. The DS Academy also supports future dental professionals through initiatives such as the Global Clinical Case Contest. To maintain the position as the global leader in dental eLearning, the Company is investing in new technology to improve the way in which Clinical Education can be accessed. Teams are working together to develop a Learning Management System as a platform for online learning from which all business units can run their CE programs. Dentsply Sirona also continues to open state-of-the-art DS Academy training centers around the world such as the facilities presented below.
Clinical Education by the numbers
As part of its commitment to empowering dental professionals to deliver better care and improve the state of oral health around the world, Dentsply Sirona is developing the broadest selection of educational content to leverage its unmatched depth of dental products and solutions. In 2017 alone, the Company offered a total of 10,786 Clinical Education courses throughout 87 countries, educating an incredible 410,460 people from many different areas of the dental industry. This represents an impressive 20 percent increase in the number of participants over 2016. Dentists accounted for the largest group of the total participants and students made up the next largest group.
Facts & figures at a glance
The main types of programs offered in 2017 were live lectures (40 percent), product trainings (29 percent), and hands-on trainings (28 percent). The Asia Pacific region held the highest number of courses with a total of 4,008 offered throughout the year, slightly edging out the EMEA region’s 3,708. All of the SBUs offered courses in 2017 led by the Endodontics SBU, which held 3,294 courses. The numbers demonstrate the commitment of the Company to reach dental professionals and to support them in providing the highest level of care to their patients. Dentsply Sirona will continue to support clinicians and technicians at sponsored events such as Dentsply Sirona World and the Implant Summit among others. Dr. Teresa A. Dolan, Vice President and Chief Clinical Officer noted that, “Reaching such a large audience gives us the opportunity to help shape the future of dental care through high-quality, evidence-based education.”
Reaching such a large audience gives us the opportunity to help shape the future of dental care through high-quality, evidence-based education.
By partnering with thought leaders, the academic and research communities, and practitioners in their local markets, Clinical Education courses match curricula to the specific needs of the participants. While always taking care to build on the principles and key components of quality dental care, the courses can also help to introduce cutting-edge methods, materials, and technologies and the participants provide valuable feedback.
New business-wide platform for all Clinical Education courses
Each year, the Company offers a diverse array of Clinical Education courses around the world for the dental industry. Most courses are held as live instructor-led training, which includes lectures, hands-on workshops and/or product training. At present, there are a variety of ways in which attendees enroll and pay for the courses and the process differs across SBUs and country organizations. This creates a challenge for gathering data and tracking performance metrics related to growing the educational programs.
In 2017 Corporate Clinical Affairs received a strategic investment to create an eLearning infrastructure including a Learning Management System (LMS) that will allow for the more efficient delivery of eLearning Courses. The LMS will enable a more uniform process across the Company for delivering Clinical Education courses. When fully implemented in 2020, event planners globally will be able to create, manage, and promote CE courses, events, webinars and on-demand interactive courses more efficiently than ever before. The IT department is working with marketing and clinical affairs teams within commercial organizations to promote the use of webinars as a way to quickly expand digital on-demand content.
Increasing demand for online courses
In 2017, Dentsply Sirona offered 58 webinars and 80 on-demand online self-study courses. The Corporate Clinical Affairs business objective is to increase eLearning opportunities by 20 percent year over year for the next 5 years. The LMS will automate the process and create a great user experience. When implemented, attendees will be able to enroll and attend courses smoothly and easily on any device. The administration side of the courses will also be fully automated making it easier on Dentsply Sirona employees running the programs.
Initial phases of implementation
The Clinical Education Learning Management System will be implemented in six phases. The initial milestones of the first two phases should be completed later this year during the fourth quarter. Those milestones include making it possible for anyone who is registered on a flagship site to enroll in online courses on that site. The first countries to get this functionality will be the U.K., Australia, the USA and Canada followed by Germany, Italy, Iberia, France, Sweden, and the Benelux region next year.
Use of webinars as a way to quickly expand digital on-demand content
Students compete in Global Clinical Case Contest
Another initiative under the banner of the Dentsply Sirona Academy is a student competition for presenting clinical case studies in aesthetic dentistry sponsored by the Restorative SBU.
The Global Clinical Case Contest (GCCC) is an annual competition in aesthetic dentistry run by Dentsply Sirona Restorative. Undergraduate and graduate students of dentistry with less than two years of clinical practice are eligible to take part by documenting a patient case with photographs and text. Since its beginning in 2004-2005, more than 2,600 dental students have participated. The GCCC fosters a connection between universities and Dentsply Sirona. The competition is a program for the promotion of talented young dentists helping to establish Dentsply Sirona Restorative products as the restorative standard for student education and training.
The participants of the Global Global Clinical Case Contest with tutors and representatives from the host Dentsply Sirona
Poster session in Madrid
The 2017-2018 competition drew students from 166 universities. Each university can designate a tutor for its participants and is eligible to submit up to three entries via its local Dentsply Sirona country office. The cases enter into a national (or regional) competition where a winner is chosen to compete in the global final where they present their cases to a high-level international panel of judges at Dentsply Sirona Restorative in Constance, Germany. The top three contestants win prizes and their cases are selected to present at the poster session at the CED/IADR-NOF Congress in Madrid, Spain in September of 2019.
Last year’s winners
The 2017 Global Winner was Paul Drehmann of the University of Wuerzburg, Germany, under the tutelage of Dr. Britta Hahn. His winning case study involved a 72-year old patient who, after the successful completion of periodontal treatment, presented with several aesthetic problems including changes in the position of the teeth, the uneven course of the incisal edges, and the partial loss of the interdental papillae.
The case showed that composite materials and layering techniques enable the clinician to achieve predictable, aesthetic results that are very satisfying to the patient.
The 2017 Global Clinical Case Contest winners: Paul Drehmann, Linda Bohlig (right), Dr. Constanze Bösel (center), Anouk Vanloy (2nd from left) and Maria Rosaria Ferraro (left)