How it all began
Promethean Dental Systems was established in late 2020 as a combination of two predecessor companies that started in early 2019, after the Simodont was researched, tested and viewed as a life-like, accurate and objective means of testing hand skills for aspiring dental students. The initial research was conducted by owners Rick Callan and Jerry Cooper, who saw more and more students arriving in their Senior Clinic at DCG without hand skills and in particular, indirect vision skills. The company’s predecessor companies were initially focused on evaluating the hand skills of pre-admission students. The evaluation, formulated through testing and research, included 6 hours of training plus an assessment of hand skills and was administered by owners, Donna Armstrong and Mike Hill. The evaluation of hand skills proved that ~50% of students were naturals and demonstrated hand skills in 3 hours of training and assessment. It demonstrated that ~90% of students demonstrated hand skills 6 hours of training and assessment. It also demonstrated that ~10% of students struggled and required additional training and assessment to demonstrate hand skills, while ~2% did not demonstrate hand skills. The next challenge taken by the owners was to integrate the Simodont into a dental school. The team started a project with UNC Chapel Hill, focused on the installation, training and integration of the Simodont into the dental school curriculum. During this project, the team, led by Rick Callan and Jerry Cooper, began to understand technology wasn’t going to replace the tools of dental education. Instead, technology would become a disrupter and driver the team would use to evolve dental education. One of the biggest areas of improvement would be machine-graded assessment or objective grading. With significant skills in the use of Digital Dentistry technology the team began to integrate the use digital technology to provide accurate, objective assessments, using products like oral scanners, comparison software and innovative procedural assessments in the Simodont. These accomplishments led the team to the realization that all assessments can be graded objectively and accurately, and that Promethean Dental Systems now had the ability to provide, both evidence of completion and evidence of performance.
Dental Education that focuses on Performance
With the ability to provide both evidence of completion and performance, the team set its sights on the next milestone, which was providing remediation services for professionals. The team’s initial customer was the State Board of Dentistry in Georgia. Achieving this milestone signaled the initial integration of the predecessor companies and the eventual formation of Promethean Dental Systems. Performing remediation services led to what is now an exclusive arrangement with the AADB to provide remediation services for the entire country through a program called Remediate +. It also led to Promethean Dental Systems’ to the realization and current focus on Patient-Less Simulation, which includes end to end case management workflows delivered in digital, virtual reality, augmented reality and physical environments without patients. With a strong understanding of how aspiring dental students might be evaluated as Applicants, the use cases for dental schools and students and the ability to provide accurate, objective assessments for professionals using remediation, Promethean Dental Systems began to approach dental education with a focus on Performance from initial interest to retirement. Promethean Dental System develops elite dental performance for Applicants, Students, Professionals and Practices. Promethean’s next step was to team with a testing agency on a licensure exam. Promethean Dental Systems provided its first simulated licensure exam in 2021, which was delivered in Georgia. This resulted in licensing the first dentist ever via a licensure exam on a Simodont in the world. It proved that students could take an exam on the Simodont without been taught on the system for the sole purpose of passing a licensure exam. The multimodal exam proved that it has patient-like dental fidelity and that examiner subjectivity can be removed in lieu of accurate and objective assessments. It proved that the licensure exam can be taken in less time and can cost less. It also proved that tests that are psychometrically accurate prove the examiners are aligned on how to grade the test. However, in 2022, while grading with examiners and objective machine grading in parallel, it proved that although psychometricaly accurate, students who were graded objectively performed many points differently than what examiners graded subjectively. Promethean Dental Systems is committed to improving upon the licensure exams provided in the Spring of 2021 by offering licensure exams that are convenient to schedule, take less time, cost less, are 100% objectively graded and that come with immediate feedback on candidate performance.
Power Users of Advanced Technology
As Promethean Dental Systems developed elite performance, the team has been developing collaborative relationships, knowledge and innovating new uses of advanced dental education technologies. Each technology used is tested to its limits by the team, documented, and assessed for it application and integration into the dental workflow. Promethean Dental Systems is collaborating with dental technology companies to learn about how they are installed and how users are trained to use the products. Promethean Dental Systems exclusively partners with multiple dental product and service providers to create the performance . Promethean Dental Systems works exclusively with best-in-class dental product and service providers. This collaboration is the toolset used by Applicants, Students, Professionals and Practices served by Promethean Dental Systems. A great example of this approach is the way in which Promethean Dental Systems collaborates with Nissin Dental and Kilgore International to design innovative, new cases for the Simodont, while exclusively providing leasing, installation, training and cloud services, like hosting, the idea box and analytic dashboards to augment the integration and insights of the product.
Integration with Lincoln Memorial University
This fall Promethean Dental Systems begins a long-term collaborating with Lincoln Memorial University in Knoxville, Tennessee. Students will be using the first-ever Performance Simulation Lab and Professionals will be leveraging Performance Learning and the Affiliate Practice Network. However, the offering that has everyone most excited is the Performance Institute where users will be able to work with everything from individual procedures to entire dental workflows. The Institute will provide attendees with the opportunity to be assessed in an end-to-end, full mouth reconstruction without touching a real patient and receive a grade that tells them their production $/day capability. Understanding the integration and the flow of the dental practice makes dentists more proficient much faster and the repetitions gained in Patient-Less Simulation creates muscle memory and improved production capabilities that benefit both the producer and the practice.
Attendees will be able to work virtually through an entire treatment plan using artificial intelligence, digital, virtual reality, augmented reality and physical environments. Besides the Simodont, the workflow incorporates diagnosis, treatment design and planning and patient scheduling and billing, and a holistic list of procedures, including local anesthesia. Promethean Dental Systems expects to have a major impact on recruiting and hiring the next generation of dentists, working with DSOs, multi-dentist practices, and manufacturer-sponsored training centers. The data that Promethean Dental Systems is analyzing from all of our virtual applications will be used in many ways. As this repository grows, we expect to be able to identify objective performance metrics. Our goal is consistent with the major motivation of every Applicant, Student, Professional and Practice: to give clinicians the essential tools for constant improvement that can elevate the quality of patient care.
Conclusion
Promethean Dental Systems is excited about the progress made to date and relishes the opportunity to develop learning options that evolve dental education from the time an aspiring dentist begins to think about a dental career until the time they retire.
