Educators, students, practitioners, and regulators in dentistry are concerned about the introduction of new technologies in dental education and assessment. Many are skeptical about change, and want to see the evidence that simulation is a good tool.

Dental education and assessment has used simulators for over a century for the development of the fine motor skills necessary for treating patients. The first simulators came into use in 1894 and have become standard in dental education. The simulators use a “phantom head” and typodont with plastic teeth of various material composure and are used by a student to practice and demonstrate competence . These simulators are widespread being a major component of dental education and assessment throughout the world.   The use of simulators in dental education and assessment (the manikins, typodonts, etc) certainly changed dental education.

As technology evolved, the opportunity to enhance simulation using computer technology became practical. Virtual reality environments became possible, along with haptics. Simulators using virtual haptics have been used in health care education since the 1990s and have become commonplace. In dentistry, the past two decades have had technological evolution in virtual haptic simulators. Many have been developed, but the Simodont is the leader in this technology. Experts consider the Simodont a very advanced simulator with its many features and is popular in dental education around the world.

This evolution did not come without research demonstrating effectiveness, but of course more is needed. Virtual simulators, haptic simulators, and virtual/haptic simulators have been examined in many different ways and demonstrated many positive outcomes on dental education (Nassar, 2020). Nassar’s review piece (2020) in the Journal of Dental Education provides a thorough recitation of work to date with virtual haptic simulators.

Examining the literature shows many interesting findings. Experiments have demonstrated repeatedly that use of a virtual simulator in education versus traditional methods results in higher quality of preparations versus conventional simulators (LeBlanc et al., 2004; Quinn et al., 2003), required less instructional time for similar outcomes than traditional methods (Jasinevicisus et al., 2004), improved manual dexterity versus traditional methods (Wiernck et al., 2006), performed better on high stakes exams with VR training in addition to traditional methods than those without (Urbankova, 2013), demonstrated an ability to predict performance on preclinical exams with first year students (Urbankova et al., 2010), amongst many others. Murbay et al. (2019) suggest that use of the Simodont may assist with students needing additional training, use in pre-admissions, retraining experienced practitioners, or with licensing exams. We agree!

Other literature reviews of virtual haptic simulators (Al-Saud et al., 2020) show the many interesting findings demonstrating the value of using this technology in dental education. We look forward to sharing our research library as we perform our own research studies in conjunction with leading institutions!