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Straumann Group Is Transforming Dentistry With Data, AI
The global manufacturer and supplier of dental implants, orthodontics, and digital dentistry is turning petabytes of data into an asset by augmenting its businesses with machine learning and AI.
Straumann Group’s Sridhar Iyengar has a bold mission: To transform the nearly 70-year-old company’s data and technology organization into a data-as-a-service provider for the global manufacturer and supplier of dental implants, prosthetics, orthodontics, and digital dentistry — and to provide business stakeholders machine learning (ML) as a service as well.
“My vision is that I can give the keys to my businesses to manage their data and run their data on their own, as opposed to the Data & Tech team being at the center and helping them out,” says Iyengar, director of Data & Tech at Straumann Group North America.
Doing so will be no small feat. The Basel, Switzerland-based company, which operates in more than 100 countries, has petabytes of data, including highly structured customer data, data about treatments and lab requests, operational data, and a massive, growing volume of unstructured data, particularly imaging data. The company’s orthodontics business, for instance, makes heavy use of image processing to the point that unstructured data is growing at a pace of roughly 20% to 25% per month.
Advances in imaging technology present Straumann Group with the opportunity to provide its customers with new capabilities to offer their clients. For example, imaging data can be used to show patients how an aligner will change their appearance over time.
“It gives a lot of power to our providers in selling their services and at the same time gets more NPS [net promoter score] for us from the patient,” says Iyengar, who believes AI will play a critical role in Straumann’s image processing and lab treatments businesses. Hence the drive to provide ML as a service to the Data & Tech team’s internal customers.
“All they would have to do is just build their model and run with it,” he says.
Advances in imaging technology present Straumann Group with the opportunity to provide its customers with new capabilities to offer their clients. For example, imaging data can be used to show patients how an aligner will change their appearance over time.
“It gives a lot of power to our providers in selling their services and at the same time gets more NPS [net promoter score] for us from the patient,” says Iyengar, who believes AI will play a critical role in Straumann’s image processing and lab treatments businesses. Hence the drive to provide ML as a service to the Data & Tech team’s internal customers.
“All they would have to do is just build their model and run with it,” he says.