Revolutionizing the dental industry

Dentsply Sirona and freiheit.com move 100.000 dentists into the cloud

Dentsply Sirona had a vision. To make the workflow of dental practices around the world efficient, fast and seamless. To give dentists time to focus on what’s really important, the well-being of the patients.

Available worldwide. For 100.000+ dentists. With millions of dental procedures every day.

To make this vision come to life, Dentsply Sirona was looking for a strong partner to help them build a solution that would bring all the dental applications safely into the cloud. This cloud platform, called DS Core, would allow dentists and laboratories to collaborate seamlessly with each other, making the workflow more efficient and the treatment span shorter for the patient.

In collaboration with Dentsply Sirona, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of professional dental products and technologies, the software engineering company freiheit.com built an all-in-one platform that enables dentists and laboratories to upload, visualize, share and store patient data directly in the cloud. This platform does what was unthinkable before, it gives professionals in the dental sector the opportunity to handle almost all of their work within one place.

Before the platform was built, all communication and collaboration between dentists and laboratories was neither unified nor in one place.

Unfolding the process

Defining the problem

With an ongoing global digitalisation across all industries, Dentsply Sirona was the first to take the next step within their industry. The entire dental sector relied heavily on on-premise IT systems in clinics and laboratories. This made it very difficult to update the software and systems, creating a high hardware dependency and making the interaction and collaboration between parties challenging. To solve these issues in a data secure way, Dentsply Sirona decided to transition its ecosystems into a new cloud architecture using Google Cloud. This would provide an end-to-end digital experience, so that one day, dentists will only need access to a browser.

The challenge

To bring the vision of DS Core to life, Dentsply Sirona and freiheit.com defined the following challenges:

• Secure real-time data sharing between dentists and laboratories.
• Smooth 3D rendering experience of intraoral scans in a cost-effective manner.
• Connection of legacy systems to the cloud to enable seamless workflows as well as a transition phase.
• Integration of all data and systems on a secure clinical cloud sharing platform. Building a platform that allows a continuous addition of clinical applications for different devices to DS Core starting with:
  • Intraoral scanning
  • Dental milling
  • 3D Printing of dental products

Solving the puzzle

• Having a secured global cloud platform to connect dentists and laboratories.
• The cloud rendering engine performs the resource intensive computations in the cloud by leveraging Google Cloud’s support for high end graphic cards.
• The result is streamed via WebRTC to the browser of the user and allows for real time interaction

Meeting the key players

Before going into depth about the roll-out of the collaboration between Dentsply Sirona and freiheit.com, it is of essence to take a look at the two companies that came together to build something revolutionary.

About Dentsply Sirona

Dentsply Sirona is the largest manufacturer of professional dental products and technologies worldwide with over 10.000 employees, a turnover of $3.93B in 2023 and a great variety of dental products. The company provides a large range of solutions that are leading product brands across consumables, equipment, technology and specialty products. It is their overall mission to improve advanced dental patient care around the world.

Dentists are one of the few medical professionals that diagnose their patients and also directly offer procedures  within the same facility. The dental industry is also one of the only ones that has successfully digitized its entire process, from diagnosis to finished dental product.

However, before DS Core was brought to life, the collaboration between dentists and laboratories was time consuming and complicated, meaning that each dental practice had its own hardware and software that wasn’t connected to each other. To place an order for a dental product, the dentist had to communicate with the laboratories using his own software as there was no platform to combine it all.

About freiheit.com

freiheit.com has been building large-scale software systems since 1999.

The software-engineering company, which was founded in Hamburg, develops large scale software platforms for international clients used by millions of users with thousands of requests per second.

Failure is not an option. freiheit.com is known for their high reputation on the market and for delivering projects reliably on time, on budget and on target.

For over a quarter of a century, they have been working for the “Who’s Who” of German and European industrial and commercial companies – across all sectors: healthcare, trade, automotive, e-commerce, and more.

Accomplishing milestones

One PoC, 3 engineers, 3 weeks, 3D rendering in GCP, seamless switch load/cloud

It all started in 2021 with a small Proof of Concept organized by Dentsply Sirona. The company had embarked on a journey to find the right partner to create a cloud solution for dentists. The collaboration they were looking for would be long-term and in close partnership with the company.

Google recommended freiheit.com to Dentsply Sirona during the PoC. freiheit.com joined this process only 3 weeks before final submission. This PoC included three different challenges:

• Sharing
• Uploading
• 3D Rendering of data in the cloud

freiheit.com selected the most challenging one, the 3D Rendering.

In only 3 weeks and with a small team of 3 engineers, freiheit.com accomplished a Proof of Concept for a software that enables dentists to stream 3D renderings in the cloud and edit them directly in the browser.

The advantages:

• 3D renderings could immediately be accessed by any dentist and collaborating laboratories.
• Rendering in the cloud minimizes the hardware dependency, creating flexibility for the end-user.

Fast implementation of new dental applications due to the flexibility of updating directly in the cloud.

Timeline DS Core

From PoC to first clinical application:

Overview proof of concept

The team that worked on the DS Core was a symbiosis of Fullstack Software Engineers coming together to create something that had not been done before. They started with a team of 3, later becoming up to 30 engineers. Early on, they decided in agreement with Dentsply Sirona, to use Flutter/Dart as their technology as it is suitable for adaptable development and could be used for a mobile application if that’s needed in the future.

Collaboration in mixed teams

Team Setup DS Core - Dentsply Sirona x freiheit.com

Release of the first Early-Market version of DS Core

7 months later

The Closed Alpha, which was already released after 7 months, is an extension of the results gained from the Proof of Concept. The early market version not only had the capability to visualize 3D data like the Proof of Concept (PoC) version, but it was also integrated into a platform offering various other features. The most important addition was the extension to store and share patient data directly in the cloud, allowing access to the data from anywhere. It was now also possible to automatically synchronize on-premise XRay scans from the dental practice into DS Core.

Presentation of DS Core at DS World in Las Vegas

10 months later

As the next step within the process, Dentsply Sirona presented DS Core at the Dentsply Sirona World in Las Vegas in 2022 which is their flagship clinical education event where all the new dental technology is presented. It is a meeting point for sales and key opinion leaders within the industry. freiheit.com accompanied Dentsply Sirona to assure a frictionless presentation of the DS Core cloud solution which was the focal point of the entire event.

Release of DS Core as the 1st clinical application at the IDS 23'

6 months later

1,788 exhibitors from 60 countries - 120.000 trade visitors from 162 countries - 180.000 m2 gross exhibition space

Dentsply Sirona and freiheit.com officially brought the first clinical application to the market and presented it at the IDS in Cologne. This trade fair is of high relevance as it is where both the latest products within the industry are presented and networking with dentists and partners from all over the world takes place.

Taking a look into the future

DS Core is well on its way to becoming the most important tool for all dentists, laboratories and patients worldwide. New features are continuously added to the cloud platform and it is already available on 5 continents and in 21 countries. Efficient workflows - all in one platform, accessible from everywhere and at any time. So dentists can focus on what’s most important - the well-being of their patients.