This image, provided by South Korean dental equipment manufacturer HDXWILL, shows its intraoral scanner.
DAEJEON, Jan. 12 (Korea Bizwire) — The trend of digitalization using artificial intelligence (AI) and 3D printing is increasingly prevalent, even in the dental implant area.
The Korea Intellectual Property Office recently said that the number of patent applications in the digital dental implant area shot up to 113 in 2019 from 41 in 2010.
The number of digital dental implant-related patent applications showed an average annual growth of 12 percent, more than twice as high as the overall growth of dental implant patent applications, which was estimated at 5 percent.
Shifting the analog-based implant surgery into a digital model could dramatically reduce the frequency and duration of patient visits.
By type of patents, the number of dental scanner-related patent applications accounted for 46.1 percent of the total, followed by simulation and computer design at 33.8 percent and dental laboratories at 20.1 percent.
Applications for dental scanner-related patents, in particular, are high since it they are regarded as skey device for digital implants.
Small and medium-sized enterprises accounted for 50.8 percent or 430 of the total patent applications, indicating that the digital implant area has a small quantity batch production system.
M. H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)
